Charlotte Gilman, American Author and Social Reformer
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (July 3, 1860 - August 17, 1935) was an American humanist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform. It was her first volume of poetry, In This Our World (1893), a collection of satirical poems, that first brought her recognition. During the next two decades she gained much of her fame with lectures on women's issues, ethics, labor, human rights, and social reform. Gilman called herself a humanist and believed the domestic environment oppressed women through the patriarchal beliefs upheld by society. She argued that male aggressiveness and maternal roles for women were artificial and no longer necessary for survival in post-prehistoric time. She became a spokesperson on topics such as women's perspectives on work, dress reform, and family. Housework, she argued, should be equally shared by men and women, and that at an early age women should be encouraged to be independent. Her best remembered work today is her semi-autobiographical short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, which she wrote after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis. In 1932, Gilman was diagnosed with incurable breast cancer. An advocate of euthanasia for the terminally ill, she committed suicide in 1935 by taking an overdose of chloroform. Photographed by Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1900
