Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935): Intellectual Pioneer

"In my judgment it is a pretty poor thing to write, to talk, without a purpose." (The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Her Societal Vision. Charlotte Perkins Gilman—a leading intellectual of the women’s movement at the turn of the 20th century—foresaw the needs of our modern age. Her vision for a more "human world" defines her entire life and literary career as a social reformer. Even as a child, she realized that through her imagination "I could make a world to suit me". As a writer, editor, publisher, and lecturer, she wrote and spoke for a "purpose," as she was often known to say, challenging many facets of women’s subjugation.

Gilman championed "important truths, needed yet unpopular" (Living 304), promoting women’s emancipation in an era when women’s place was firmly in the domestic sphere, and marriage and motherhood were sacrosanct. Gilman advocated equal education, women’s suffrage, women’s autonomy, payment for housework, meaningful work outside the home, dress reform, marriage on the basis of love over economic necessity, and community child care—the most radical part of her agenda. Many visionary ideas that Gilman predicted for women have become realities in this millennium.

Today, Gilman is best known for her landmark short story "The Yellow Wall-Paper" (1892), a striking portrayal of a woman succumbing to madness due to the confines of rigid Victorian American society. This story, rediscovered in the 1970s at the start of second-wave feminism, helped secure Gilman’s place in the contemporary literary canon. Regrettably, however, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" has come to define Gilman—a simplification that overshadows the complexity and impressiveness of her life and oeuvre, which includes novels, poetry, short stories, essays, an autobiography, journalism, and theoretical works.

Early Literary Fame and Public Recognition. Gilman first earned her reputation as a poet, writing civic satire that garnered praise from luminaries including Upton Sinclair, George Bernard Shaw, Woodrow Wilson, and William Dean Howells. At the turn of the 20th century she was best known for Women and Economics (1898), a treatise about women’s suppression that gained her international acclaim. Gilman was also a tireless lecturer and editor, who single-handedly wrote and produced the Forerunner (1909–16), a journal with a marked socialist slant devoted to women’s rights.

Born on July 3, 1860, in Hartford, Connecticut, Gilman, née Charlotte Anna Perkins, regrets in her autobiography that she was born on the eve of America’s Independence Day; she believed the "glorious Fourth" (Living 8) would have better characterized her revolutionary spirit. Both of her parents, Mary Fitch Westcott and Frederick Beecher Perkins, were members of prominent families, but Gilman was fiercely proud of her Beecher relatives; the educator Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, were her great-aunts, and the noted evangelist Lyman Beecher was her great-grandfather. Charlotte’s parents married in 1857 and had four children (two died in infancy; Charlotte was the third child); they divorced in 1873.

Childhood Hardships and Intellectual Development. Deprivation and perseverance characterize Gilman’s childhood. She never experienced a secure home life: Her father deserted the family when she was young, stigmatizing Charlotte and her older brother, Thomas; in fact, she recounts in her autobiography that "my childhood had no father" (Living 5). She often sparred with her emotionally undemonstrative mother and lamented her "uncuddled childhood" (Living 78). Gilman also experienced chronic poverty; depending upon the kindness of relatives, Mary Perkins, continually plagued by debt, moved her family 19 times in 18 years.

Although Gilman received little formal education, she claims in her autobiography to have inherited a sense of duty from her mother and an appetite for knowledge from her father (Living 44), who became a librarian. She was a bright and precocious learner. By age five she had taught herself to read; by age eight, she began to write imaginative tales. An avid reader, she enjoyed the fiction and essays of her favorite authors: Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Edgar Allan Poe, and Henry David Thoreau. In 1880 she completed a two-year art course at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, enabling her to earn a modest income as a commercial artist and private teacher. However, she yearned for a more independent life, to contribute to humanity as a "world servant," not a "house servant," to use Gilman’s own words. During this period she had a close friendship with Martha Luther, the first of a number of significant female friendships in her life that ended upon Martha’s marriage in 1881.

First Marriage, Domestic Restraints, and Mental Health Crisis. In Providence at age 21 she met the artist Charles Walter Stetson; a marriage proposal soon followed. Although she initially declined to devote her life to her "world’s work," after a turbulent two-year courtship, she reluctantly agreed to marry Stetson. They wed on May 2, 1884. Before marriage the conventional Walter pledged that he would not object to her writing, a promise he failed to keep; she soon found that marriage and motherhood hampered her ability to do meaningful work. She claims in her autobiography and diaries that she objected to the conventions of Victorian marriage, not to Walter per se, whom she describes as loving, devoted, and tender. She later turned her misgivings about the private home into poetry collected in In This Our World (1893): "In Duty Bound" critiques the restrictive domestic sphere, and "The Mother’s Charge" and "To the Young Wife" both lambaste the private home as the source of women’s subjugation and marriage as a crippling institution.

After the birth of her only child, her daughter Katharine Beecher Stetson, and only 10 months into her marriage, Gilman experienced severe depression. Chilling is her diary entry of August 30, 1885: "Every morning the same hopeless waking. Every day the same weary drag. To die mere cowardice. Retreat impossible, escape impossible" (Diaries 1:332). She weaned her baby, traveled west to visit her father and brother, and then stayed in Pasadena, California, with her old friend Grace Ellery Channing (who became Walter’s second wife in 1894). Cured upon her return, she soon grew despondent again, realizing, "Now I saw the stark fact—that I was well while away and sick while at home" (Living 95).

The Rest Cure Medical Experience. In spring 1887 Charlotte Stetson, then age 26, agreed to undergo a one-month rest cure at the Philadelphia sanitarium of Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, a noted neurologist. Mitchell described her condition as neurasthenia (also called nervous prostration), a breakdown of the nervous system, not uncommon among women in the Victorian era. Sigmund Freud, also trained as a neurologist, approved of Mitchell’s rest cure, which aimed to heal the mind by treating the body; the five components of the cure were excessive feeding, bed rest, seclusion, massage, and electricity. Well known is Mitchell’s parting advice: "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" (Living 96).

Following Mitchell’s prescription, Gilman found her condition worsened; she teetered on the brink of a total nervous breakdown. She could not simply abandon her sense of social purpose to live with her traditional husband; they separated in 1888 and divorced in 1894.

Relocation to California and Career Emergence. Upon separation she moved with Katharine to Pasadena, where she immediately experienced improved health. Walter followed her to Pasadena two months later and remained there for a year, but they never reconciled. In California Gilman launched her writing career to support her and Katharine, publishing articles and stories, including "The Yellow Wall-Paper" (1892). In 1893 she lost her mother to cancer; published her first collection of verses, entitled In This Our World; and edited a short-lived magazine sponsored by the Pacific Coast Women’s Press Association (PCWPA) called the Impress.

In 1894 Gilman sent her daughter east, relinquishing custody of Katharine to Stetson just before his second marriage, to Grace Channing, whom Gilman considered her "co-mother". This living arrangement, which seems strikingly modern, led to harsh criticism. Some of her contemporaries dubbed her an "unnatural mother" and cancelled her speaking engagements when they realized she had given up her daughter. The Impress lost its backing from the PCWPA, as Gilman was considered a liability because of her divorce and unconventional mothering. However, relinquishing her maternal responsibilities enabled Gilman to dedicate her whole life to serving the community at large. Thus, 1894 also marks the date when Gilman achieved her life’s ambition to give full and earnest attention to her professional career. She wrote and lectured prolifically across the United States and eventually in Europe. Whether writing verse, fiction, or nonfiction, she made a case for social change to improve the lives of women and benefit society.

Second Marriage and Unprecedented Literary Productivity. Although she had not intended to remarry, she changed her mind after renewing an acquaintance with her first cousin, Houghton (Ho) Gilman, a New York patent attorney. In 1900 she married Houghton, who supported her career by attending her lectures, assisting with her research, and reading her work. In fact, the next two decades were highly productive ones for Gilman, who found a way to balance an active career with a lasting marriage. She wrote several influential books: Concerning Children (1900), The Home: Its Work and Influence (1903), Human Work (1904), and The Man-Made World: Or, Our Androcentric Culture (1911).

Gilman also founded the Forerunner (1909–16), declaring in her autobiography: "If the editors and publishers will not bring out my work, I will!" And I did (Living 304). Her monthly feminist publication, which she wrote and published single-handedly, featured poems, short stories, articles, and serialized books and novels, including What Diantha Did (1910), The Crux (1911), and her utopian novel, Herland (1915). She had subscribers from Europe, India, and Australia, as well as from across the United States.

In 1916 Gilman ended the Forerunner. Her readership was waning. Times were changing. The women’s movement dwindled after suffrage. Post-World War I audiences were put off by Gilman’s dual allegiances to socialism and feminism. In 1922 she completed her final social treatise, His Religion and Hers (1923), which received mixed reviews. Gilman lamented her fallen popularity and feared that society had made poor progress in attaining the widespread reforms she had envisioned for women. Still eager to retain her audience and "make a world to suit" her, she completed several projects late in her career to ensure that her legacy would continue but was unable to find a publisher for them. These included A Study in Ethics; another anthology of poetry, entitled Here Also; and her lone feminist detective novel, Unpunished (ca. 1929), which remained unpublished at the time of her death. In this final significant work of feminist fiction Gilman turned to a genre popular between the two world wars to create a "whodunit" with a satirical twist: In Unpunished she makes a strong case against domestic abuse decades before this term even entered the U.S. vocabulary.

Final Years, Illness, and Enduring Legacy. In 1932 Gilman was diagnosed with breast cancer. She devoted her final years to her autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1935), published posthumously with an introduction by the author Zona Gale. Houghton died unexpectedly of a cerebral brain hemorrhage on May 4, 1934. After Houghton’s death Gilman moved to her former home in Pasadena, to be near her daughter, Katharine, and her grandchildren. Her close friend Grace Channing Stetson, now widowed, joined her in California. As her disease progressed, Gilman planned her suicide, arranged for her cremation, and left instructions for Katharine to scatter her ashes in the Sierra Madre. On August 17, 1935, she took her life by inhaling chloroform. Her dying, like her living, was marked with conviction, spirit, and dignity.

Key Milestones in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Life and Career:
- 1860: Born on July 3 in Hartford, Connecticut.
- 1880: Completed two-year art course at Rhode Island School of Design.
- 1884: Married Charles Walter Stetson on May 2.
- 1885: Birth of daughter Katharine Beecher Stetson; onset of severe depression.
- 1887: Underwent Dr. S. Weir Mitchell's "rest cure" treatment.
- 1888: Separated from Charles Walter Stetson and relocated to Pasadena, California.
- 1892: Published "The Yellow Wall-Paper".
- 1893: Published first poetry collection, In This Our World.
- 1894: Granted custody of Katharine to Stetson; formal divorce finalized.

- 1898: Published international landmark treatise Women and Economics.
- 1900: Married Houghton (Ho) Gilman; published Concerning Children.
- 1903: Published The Home: Its Work and Influence.
- 1904: Published Human Work.
- 1909–1916: Single-handedly wrote, edited, and published the Forerunner periodical.
- 1911: Published The Man-Made World: Or, Our Androcentric Culture.
- 1915: Serialized utopian feminist novel Herland.
- 1923: Published final social treatise His Religion and Hers.
- 1932: Diagnosed with breast cancer.
- 1934: Death of husband Houghton Gilman on May 4.
- 1935: Died on August 17 in Pasadena, California.