Charlotte Perkins Gilman by Ellen Day Hale |
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) was not a conventional 19th
century woman. A great niece of the reformers Harriet Beecher Stowe and
Henry Ward Beecher, she, too, was concerned with the complacency of a
corrupt and retrogressive society. Gilman struggled throughout her life
with childhood desertion and poverty and recurring depression that
virtually incapacitated her. She was compelled to carry out her mission
of reform despite these obstacles, and focused her attention on the
plight of women and workers.
An avowed Socialist, she refused to label herself a feminist, preferring to see
her role as that of a humanist crusader in a "masculinist" world. Her
diverse and prodigious canon, from the dramatic short story The Yellow Wallpaper (1891) to her prescient philosophical treatises Women and Economics (1898), The Home: Its Work and Influence (1902), and the utopian novel Herland
(1916) relentlessly questioned the values of the status quo. From 1909
to 1916 she singlehandedly wrote, edited and published a radical
monthly journal, The Forerunner, giving herself a forum to express freely her important, yet often unpopular, truths.
Gilman's message, that we each have an opportunity and a responsibility
to contribute to the betterment of humankind, resonates with those who
hear it several decades later. It is a message of empowerment and
service that is particularly pertinent to these challenging times in
which we live.
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