Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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Standard Name: Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
Birth Name: Charlotte Anna Perkins
Married Name: Charlotte Perkins Stetson
Self-constructed Name: C. P. Stetson
CPG , a prolific early twentieth-century American writer and feminist social critic, published satirical poems and nationalist verse, newspaper articles, short stories, serialized novels, and a vast amount of non-fiction. She was unapologetically didactic, and advocated for women's liberation from domestic service in order to better society. Her writing, and in particular her short story The Yellow Wall-Paper, became a touchstone for second-wave feminism in the United States.
Black and white photograph of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, shown in profile, from the torso up, with one hand resting on a fur wrap. She wears a dark jacket over a white shirt and her wavy hair is done in a loose bun.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Gertrude Stein
At this time, GS came into contact with an old friend, Claribel Cone , a physician who continued to take courses at Johns Hopkins . Claribel asked Gertrude to give a lecture about the advantage...
Family and Intimate relationships Harriet Beecher Stowe
Among the descendants of HBS are writers Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Nancy Hale .
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
Friends, Associates Mona Caird
She met Arthur Symons in June 1889, and in the following month Thomas Hardy carefully arranged to sit between her and Rosamund Marriott Watson (and opposite F. Mabel Robinson ) at a dinner of the...
Friends, Associates E. Nesbit
Through her political interests she got to know George Bernard Shaw (with whom she had a brief affair but a succeeding steady friendship), Sidney Webb , Sydney Olivier , Annie Besant , Eleanor Marx ,...
Health Elizabeth Robins
The rest cure had been a popular treatment for neurasthenia in Britain since the 1880s. Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's 1891 story, The Yellow Wallpaper, exposes the cure's damaging psychological effects on women. Like Gilman...
Intertextuality and Influence Dora Marsden
In the course of getting the journal off the ground, Marsden also contacted Katherine Mansfield , Charlotte Perkins Gilman , Charlotte Payne-Townshend , Arnold Bennett , and Theodore Dreiser . (Payne-Townshend, wife of G. B. Shaw
Intertextuality and Influence Olive Schreiner
To Vera Brittain and some of her contemporaries, Women and Labour was the Bible of the Women's Movement. It influenced the writings of many early-twentieth-century feminists, including historian Alice Clark and suffragette Constance Lytton
Literary responses Jane Hume Clapperton
Responses to Clapperton's paper were mixed. Miss E. A. (or Ellen) Barnett suggested that the Utopia that Clapperton proposed would not work. She gave the example of a group of backward individuals who had tried...
Literary responses Mary Fortune
To critic Andrew ManghamThe White Maniac examplifies a Victorian fascination with the potential for violence and irrationality in female adolescents, and detection as sustain[ing] a number of social hierarchies through the actual and figurative...
Literary Setting Florence Dixie
Her biographer Brian Roberts calls this novel rambling and semi-mystical.
Roberts, Brian. The Mad Bad Line. Hamish Hamilton, 1981.
278
It includes another feminist utopia in the inset story of Loveland, some of whose elements are parallelled in Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's Herland...
politics Vernon Lee
Vineta Colby describes VL 's politics as liberal with socialist leanings.
Colby, Vineta. Vernon Lee: A Literary Biography. University of Virginia Press, 2003.
272
Lee disagreed with the Liberal government's refusal to grant women the vote: she supported suffrage but disapproved of militancy.
Gunn, Peter. Vernon Lee: Violet Paget, 1856-1935. Oxford University Press, 1964.
202
Her views on...
politics Constance Lytton
CL was conscious of gender issues long before she became a supporter of the women's movement or a suffragist. In 1893 she described herself as so giddy with anger against several groups of her own...
politics Mary Gawthorpe
It was apparently MG who began the action, when Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman refused to meet the suffrage deputation and she sprang on one of the sacred velvet chairs, and began to speak.
qtd. in
Holton, Sandra Stanley. Suffrage Days: Stories from the Women’s Suffrage Movement. Routledge, 1996.
127
Reception Sarah Orne Jewett
The Feminist Companion describes the novel as her masterpiece; realistic in style and innovative in form, it pursues the matriarchal theme explored in much of her work.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford, 1990.
The central character, a harried female writer, comes...
Textual Features Kathleen Caffyn
Critic Stephanie Forward has pointed out that at this date the colour yellow signified avant-garde and slightly dangerous fashion, as had been recognised in such literary works as Mona Caird 's The Yellow Drawing-Room and...

Timeline

1873: American neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell...

Building item

1873

American neurologist Silas Weir Mitchell developed a controversial treatment programme for neurasthenia.
Showalter, Elaine. The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980. Pantheon Books, 1985.
138-40

1883: English obstetrics professor W. S. Playfair...

Building item

1883

English obstetrics professor W. S. Playfair advocated the rest cure in The Systematic Treatment of Nerve Prostration and Hysteria.
Showalter, Elaine. The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980. Pantheon Books, 1985.
139-141, 273

15-21 June 1913: The Congress of the International Women's...

National or international item

15-21 June 1913

The Congress of the International Women's Suffrage Alliance was held at Budapest in Hungary.
Hannam, June et al. International Encyclopedia of Women’s Suffrage. ABC-CLIO, 2000.
“Papers of Charlotte Despard”. AIM25: London Metropolitan University: Women’s Library.

Texts

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “Benigna MachiavelliForerunner, Vol.
5
, Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “HerlandForerunner, Vol.
6
, Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “Mag-MarjorieForerunner, Vol.
3
, Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “With Her in OurlandForerunner, Vol.
7
, Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “With Her in OurlandCharlotte Perkins Gilmans Utopian Novels, edited by Minna Doskow, Associated University Presses, 1999.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “Won OverForerunner, Vol.
4
, Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “Afterword”. Unpunished, edited by Denise D. Knight and Catherine J. Golden, The Feminist Press, 1997.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Concerning Children. Small, Maynard & Co., 1900.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, editor. Forerunner. Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Herland. Pantheon Books, 1979.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. His Religion and Hers: A Study of the Faith of Our Fathers and the Work of Our Mothers. Century Co., 1923.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “In Duty Bound”. Woman’s Journal, No. 15, Woman’s Journal, p. 14.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. In This Our World. McCombs & Vaughn, 1893.
Shulman, Robert, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. “Introduction”. The Yellow Wall-Paper and Other Stories, Oxford University Press, 1995, p. vii - xxxii.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Moving the Mountain. Charlton Co., 1911.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “Moving the Mountain”. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Utopian Novels, edited by Minna Doskow, Associated University Presses, 1999, pp. 37-149.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “Similar Cases”. Nationalist, Vol.
2
, Nationalist.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Crux. Charlton Co., 1911.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. An Autobiography. Editor Lane, Ann J., University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography. Editor Gale, Zona, Appleton-Century, 1935.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography. Arno Press, 1972.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Man-Made World; or, Our Androcentric Culture. Charlton & Co., 1911.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Man-Made World; or, Our Androcentric Culture. Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1971.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wall-Paper”. The New England Magazine, Vol.
11
, No. 5, pp. 647-56.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, and Robert Shulman. The Yellow Wall-Paper and Other Stories. Oxford University Press, 1995.