Women's History

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

1860-1935
American social activist and writer

"Women are human beings as much as men, by nature; and as women, are even more sympathetic with human processes. To develop human life in its true powers we need fully equal citizenship for women."

Introduction

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent social activist and leading theorist of the women's movement at the turn of the twentieth century. She examined the role of women in society and put forth her social theories in Women and Economics and other nonfiction books, while she developed her feminist ideals in her novels and short stories. Gilman is best known today for her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," in which she portrayed a young woman's mental breakdown based on her own experience. Believing society could be changed for the better for women through the use of reason, she wrote books to advance her ideas.

Family deserted by father

Gilman was born in Hartford, Connecticut on July 3, 1860, to Frederick Beecher Perkins, a noted librarian and magazine editor, and his wife, Mary Fitch Perkins. Gilman's father frequently left the family for long periods during her childhood and he sometimes sent educational books for Gilman to read. He eventually divorced his wife in 1869. Although Gilman's mother withheld love to toughen up her children, she would hold them while they slept and Gilman would remain awake to experience the embrace. During his absences, Perkins had left his wife and children with his relatives, thus bringing Gilman into contact with her independent and reform-minded great aunts — Harriet Beecher Stowe, an abolitionist and author of Uncle Tom's Cabin; Catherine Beecher, the prominent advocate of "domestic feminism"; and Isabella Beecher Hooker, an ardent suffragist (supporter of women's right to vote). But Gilman's primary childhood experience was a series of frequent moves to try to reduce the family's poverty.

Suffers mental breakdown

Gilman's great aunts and her own mother's self-reliance were influential in developing her feminist convictions and desire for social reform. Early in her life Gilman displayed the independence she later advocated for women: she insisted on payment for her household chores and she paid her mother room and board while supporting herself as a teacher and commercial artist. She had no desire for clothes and jewelry, preferring instead to engage in physical exercise and to read books of philosophy. In 1884, at the age of 24, she reluctantly married Charles Walter Stetson, who was also an artist. Following the birth of their daughter Katharine Beecher the next year, Gilman suffered from severe depression. She consulted the noted neurologist S. Weir Mitchell, who prescribed his "rest cure" of complete bed rest and limited intellectual activity. Gilman credited this experience with driving her "near the borderline of utter mental ruin," so she removed herself from Mitchell's care. After her health improved during a trip to California she attributed her emotional problems in part to her marriage and left her husband.

Writes "feminist manifesto"

In 1888 Gilman moved to Pasadena, California, with her daughter and her destitute mother. Having no means of support, she turned to writing poetry and short stories, among them "The Yellow Wallpaper," which has since become a feminist classic. When Stetson married her best friend, the author Grace Ellery Channing, Gilman sent Katharine to live with them — an act that, coupled with the divorce, proved scandalous. In her effort to find employment Gilman first moved in 1894 to San Francisco, where she edited feminist publications, assisted in the planning of the California Women's Congresses of 1894-95, and helped found the Women's Peace Party. At the 1895 congress she met the social reformer Jane Addams, who invited her to spend several months at Hull House in Chicago, Illinois. Gilman then toured the United States and England lecturing on women's rights and on labor reform. In 1898 she published Women in Economics, her best-known nonfiction work and "feminist manifesto." In the book Gilman argued that women's secondary status in society, and especially their economic dependence on men, is not the result of biological inferiority but rather of culturally enforced behavior.

Friend does housework

In 1900 she married George Houghton Gilman, a first cousin who was seven years younger than she, and who was supportive of her intense involvement in social reform. Her friend, Helen Campbell, moved in to cook and clean the house — work that Gilman could never do herself. From 1909 through 1916 Gilman published a monthly journal, The Forerunner, for which she wrote nearly all of the copy that she claimed could fill 28 long books. As a vehicle for advancing social awareness, The Forerunner has been called her "single greatest achievement." Yet Gilman could never make it financially profitable. During this period she also wrote essays, such as Concerning Children (1900), Human Work (1904), and The Man-Made World (1911), in which she asserted that women should work outside of the home, fully using their abilities for the benefit of society and for their own satisfaction. She proposed removing from the home such duties as cooking, laundry, and child care by arranging households in clusters of single-family dwellings or multifamily buildings with trained personnel in charge of these tasks.

Writes novels about ideal societies

In her fiction Gilman portrayed women struggling to achieve self-sufficiency or adapting to newfound independence. Her short stories frequently provide models showing women how to change their lives or redesign society, while her last three books of fiction, Moving and Mountain (1911), Herland (1915), and With Her in Ourland (1916), are utopian novels showing societies in which attitudes toward women and their abilities have radically changed. Critics find that despite her shortcomings as a fiction writer, Gilman used satire well in Herland. The novel challenges accepted images of women by describing the reactions of three American males who enter Herland, an all-female society which reproduces through parthenogenesis, reproduction by the development of an unfertilized ovum, as in certain insects and algae.

Leaves legacy for women

In 1935, after learning that she suffered from inoperable cancer, Gilman took her own life. She wrote in a final note that "when one is assured of unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one." She died on August 17, 1935, in Pasadena, California, at the age of 75. With the changes in American society since World War I (1914-1918), Gilman's economic theories have appeared less radical and have therefore attracted less notice. However, as women's roles continue to evolve, her studies on society and her suggestions for nontraditional housekeeping and child care arrangements gain in significance. Many modern feminist nonfiction works reflect Gilman's, and readers are rediscovering that her ideas are relevant to contemporary problems.

"THE YELLOW WALLPAPER"

The short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" is considered Gilman's best work of fiction and is also her least typical. Rather than an optimistic vision of what women can achieve, the story is a first-person account of a young mother's mental deterioration, based on Gilman's own experiences. Although early reviewers interpreted "The Yellow Wallpaper" as either a horror story or a case study in mental illness, most critics today see it as a feminist indictment of society's subjugation of women and praise its compelling characterization, complex symbolism, and thematic depth.

Further Reading

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Nonfiction Reader, Columbia University Press, 1990.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography, University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.
Lane, Ann J., To Herland and Beyond: The Life of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Pantheon Books, 1990.

Source

U·X·L® Biographies, U·X·L, 1996.
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