intro. to charlotte perkins gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman


• Born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1860

• Abandoned by her father at birth and raised

by her emotionally distant single mother

• Married at age 23, she worried that her duties

as wife and mother would interfere with her

writing career

• Gave birth at age 24; experiences

postpartum depression and is prescribed the

“rest cure” that leads her to write “The Yellow

Wall-paper”

Gilman’s Early Life


• Early writings—such as a poem in defense of

prostitutes—display a desire to support

women’s causes

• Nonfiction works include Women and

Economics (1898), The Man-Made World

(1911), and His Religion and Hers (1923)

• Utopian feminist novels include Moving the

Mountain (1911) and Herland (1915)

Gilman’s Feminist Activism


Gilman’s Feminist Activism


“A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I

would say a haunted house, and reach the

height of romantic felicity—but that would be

asking too much of fate!

Still I will proudly declare that there is

something queer about it.

Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And

why have stood so long untenanted?

John laughs at me, of course, but one

expects that in marriage.”

“The Yellow Wall-paper”


“But I forgot I could not reach far without

anything to stand on!

This bed will not move!

I tried to lift and push it until I was lame, and

then I got so angry I bit off a little piece at one

corner—but it hurt my teeth.

Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach

standing on the floor. It sticks horribly and the

pattern just enjoys it! All those strangled heads and

bulbous eyes and waddling fungus growths just

shriek with derision!”



She walketh veiled and sleeping,

For she knoweth not her power;

She obeyeth but the pleading

Of her heart, and the high leading

Of her soul, unto this hour.

Slow advancing, halting, creeping,

Comes the Woman to the hour!–

She walketh veiled and sleeping,

For she knoweth not her power.

“She Walketh Veiled and Sleeping”


• In a sestina, the same six words appear at

the end of each line, but in a different order

every stanza

• Why did Gilman choose these six particular

words?

– homes

– peace

– life

– love

– care

– world

“To the Indifferent Women”


• Marion Marroner: “In her reserved, superior,

Boston-bred life, she had never dreamed that

it would be possible for her to feel so many

things at once, and with such trampling

intensity.”

• Gerta Peterson: “a tall, rosy-cheeked baby;

rich womanhood without, helpless infancy

within.”

“Turned”


“Through the wide doorway there came in to

him two women. One like a tall Madonna, bearing

a baby in her arms.

Marion, calm, steady, definitely impersonal,

nothing but a clean pallor to hint of inner stress.

Gerta, holding the child as a bulwark, with a

new intelligence in her face, and her blue, adoring

eyes fixed on her friend—not upon him.

He looked from one to the other dumbly.

And the woman who had been his wife asked

quietly: ‘What have you to say to us?’ ”

“Turned”

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intro. to charlotte perkins gilman

Education

literature of argument

dependency of women

rights of women

growth of women

edition copyright

feminist activist

feminist prose

story of gilmans early