Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman (; née Perkins; July 3, 1860 – August 17, 1935), also known by her first married name Charlotte Perkins Stetson, was an American humanist, novelist, writer, lecturer, early sociologist, and advocate for social reform. She was an early and leading figure in the women's rights movement in the United States, and in modern terms is regarded as a socialist feminist.
Gilman's works were primarily focused on gender, specifically the gendered labor division in society, and the problem of male supremacism. She is best known for her semi-autobiographical short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892), based on her experience with postpartum depression; her manifesto calling for women's economic independence, Women and Economics (1898); and the utopian feminist novel, Herland (1915). She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 1994.
Early life
Charlotte Anna Perkins was born on July 3, 1860, in Hartford, Connecticut, to Mary Fitch Westcott and Frederic Beecher Perkins, a member of a prominent American religious and literary family. Charlotte had one brother, Thomas Adie, who was fourteen months older. During Charlotte's infancy, her father moved out and abandoned his wife and children, and the remainder of her childhood was spent in poverty. Her mother was not affectionate with her children. She forbade her children from forming strong friendships or reading fiction. In her autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Gilman wrote that her mother showed affection only when she thought her young daughter was asleep.Gilman, Living, p. 10.
Though estranged from Frederic, the Perkins relied on his aunts for support, including Isabella Beecher Hooker, a suffragist, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, both of whom influenced Charlotte's perceptions of the world. In written communication with her father, he provided her with reading lists for scholarly works on history, anthropology, and the sciences.Denise D. Knight, The Diaries of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia: 1994), p. xiv.
Much of Gilman's youth was spent in Providence, Rhode Island. What friends she had were mainly male, and she was unashamed to call herself a "tomboy".Polly Wynn Allen, Building Domestic Liberty, (1988), p. 30. Her schooling was erratic: she attended seven different schools, for a cumulative total of just four years, ending when she was fifteen. Her natural intelligence and breadth of knowledge always impressed her teachers, who were nonetheless disappointed in her because she was a poor student.Gilman, Autobiography, p. 26.
She was known to frequent the public library to study physics, literature, history (particularly ancient civilizations) on her own. Her favorite subject was "natural philosophy", especially what later would become known as physics. In 1878, the eighteen-year-old enrolled in classes at the Rhode Island School of Design with the monetary help of her absent father,Gilman, "Autobiography", Chapter 5 and subsequently supported herself as an artist of trade cards. She was a tutor, and encouraged others to expand their artistic creativity.Gilman, Autobiography, p. 29. She was also a painter.
During her time at the Rhode Island School of Design, Gilman met Martha Luther in about 1879Kate Bolick, "The Equivocal Legacy of Charlotte Perkins Gilman" (2019). and was believed to be in a romantic relationship with her. Gilman described the close relationship she had with Luther in her autobiography:
Letters between the two women chronicles their lives from 1883 to 1889 and contains over 50 letters, including correspondence, illustrations and manuscripts. They pursued their relationship until Luther ended the relationship to marry a man in 1881. Gilman was devastated and detested romance and love until she met her first husband.
Adulthood
In 1884, she married the artist Charles Walter Stetson, whom she met while studying art at the Rhode Island School of Design.Gilman, Autobiography, 82. Their only child, Katharine Beecher Stetson (1885–1979), was born the following year on March 23, 1885. Gilman suffered a serious bout of postpartum depression, and was prescribed lengthy confinement to her bed, known as the "rest cure treatment" under supervision of Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, who developed the treatment. Gilman was given the following instructions: "Live as domestic a life as possible. Have your child with you all the time... Lie down an hour after each meal. Have but two hours' intellectual life a day. And never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live." She tried for a few months to follow Mitchell's advice, but her depression deepened, and she came perilously close to a full emotional collapse.Gilman, Autobiography, 96. She began to display suicidal behavior that involved talk of pistols and chloroform, as recorded in her husband's diaries. This experience inspired her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892).
In 1888, Charlotte separated from her husband—a rare occurrence in the late nineteenth century—and moved to Pasadena, California with her daughter and lived with friend Grace Ellery Channing. She officially divorced Stetson in 1894, and he married Channing.Knight, Diaries, 408. Gilman reported in her memoir that she was happy for the couple, since Katharine's "second mother was fully as good as the first, [and perhaps] better in some ways."Knight, Diaries, 163. Gilman also held progressive views about paternal rights and acknowledged that her ex-husband "had a right to some of [Katharine's] society" and that Katharine "had a right to know and love her father."Knight, Diaries.
After her mother died in 1893, Gilman decided to move back east for the first time in eight years. She contacted Houghton Gilman, her first cousin, whom she had not seen in roughly fifteen years, who was a Wall Street attorney. They began spending time together almost immediately and became romantically involved. While she went on lecture tours, Houghton and Charlotte exchanged letters and spent as much time as they could together before she left.Knight, Diaries, 648–666. From their wedding in 1900 until 1922, they lived in New York City. In 1922, Gilman moved from New York to Houghton's old homestead in Norwich, Connecticut. Following Houghton's sudden death from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1934, Gilman moved back to Pasadena, California, where her daughter lived.Knight, Diaries, p. 813.
In January 1932, Gilman was diagnosed with incurable breast cancer.Polly Wynn Allen, Building Domestic Liberty, 54. An advocate of euthanasia for the terminally ill, Gilman died by suicide on August 17, 1935, by taking an overdose of chloroform. In both her autobiography and suicide note, she wrote that she "chose chloroform over cancer" and she died quickly and quietly.
Career After moving to Pasadena, Gilman became active in organizing social reform movements. As a delegate, she represented California in 1896 at both the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention in Washington, D.C., and the International Socialist and Labor Congress in London.Gilman, Autobiography 187, 198. In 1890, she was introduced to the Nationalist Clubs movement which worked to "end capitalism's greed and distinctions between classes while promoting a peaceful, ethical, and truly progressive human race." Published in the Nationalist magazine, her poem "Similar Cases" was a satirical review of people who resisted social change, and she received positive feedback from critics for it. Throughout that same year, 1890, she became inspired enough to write fifteen essays, poems, a novella, and the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper".
Her career was launched when she began lecturing on Nationalism and gained the public's eye with her first volume of poetry, In This Our World, published in 1893.Knight, Diaries, 409. As a successful lecturer who relied on giving speeches as a source of income, her fame grew along with her social circle of similar-minded activists and writers of the feminist movement.
Over the course of her career, in addition to publishing poems and fiction, Gilman published six significant books of non-fiction; a contribution which led her to be seen as one of the “women founders” of the discipline of sociology."Charlotte Perkins Gilman--Gender and Social Structure," in "The Women Founders: Sociology & Social Theory, 1830-1930" by Patricia Madoo Lengermann and Gillian Niebrugge.(Longgrove, IL: Waveland Press, 2006). These works, and additional published journal articles, exposed both gender and class inequality, criticizing it as illegitimate and unfair. She was a member of the American Sociological Association from the time of its founding in 1905 to her death in 1935.
"The Yellow Wallpaper"
In 1890, Gilman wrote her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper", which is now the all-time best selling book of the Feminist Press. She wrote it on June 6 and 7, 1890, in her home of Pasadena, and it was printed a year and a half later in the January 1892 issue of The New England Magazine. Since its original printing, it has been anthologized in numerous collections of women's literature, American literature, and textbooks,Julie Bates Dock, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-Paper" and the History of Its Publication and Reception. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998; p. 6. though not always in its original form. For instance, many textbooks omit the phrase "in marriage" from a very important line in the beginning of story: "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage." The reason for this omission is a mystery, as Gilman's views on marriage are made clear throughout the story.
The story is about a woman who suffers from mental illness after three months of being closeted in a room by her husband for the sake of her health. She becomes obsessed with the room's revolting yellow wallpaper. Gilman wrote this story to change people's minds about the role of women in society, illustrating how women's lack of autonomy is detrimental to their mental, emotional, and even physical wellbeing. This story was inspired by her treatment from her first husband. The narrator in the story must do as her husband (who is also her doctor) demands, although the treatment he prescribes contrasts directly with what she truly needs—mental stimulation and the freedom to escape the monotony of the room to which she is confined. "The Yellow Wallpaper" was essentially a response to the doctor (Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell) who had tried to cure her of her depression through a "rest cure" and who is mentioned in the story: "John says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall." She sent him a copy of the story.Dock, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-Paper" and the History of Its Publication and Reception, pp. 23–24.
"The Yellow Wallpaper" has very similar aspects to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's own life, specifically her struggles with mental health and her experience with the “rest cure”-therapy. After the birth of her daughter in 1885, Gilman suffered from severe depression. On the advice of her doctor, she got a treatment for that she had to live a quiet, domestic life, avoid intellectual work, and keep her distance from any form of creative expression, including writing or painting.
This treatment, intended to improve her health, instead it worsened her mental state, which made her write the story about the experience from the perspective of her own fictional character “The Yellow Wallpaper”. In the short story, the narrator, Jane, goes through a similar treatment, to stay in a room and unallowed to write. The isolation and lack of tasks lead her to a mental decline and following breakdown, symbolized by her obsession with the yellow wallpaper.
The Home: Its Work and Influence