A Journey from Within: The Love Letters of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1897-1900
Jan 1995 · Bucknell University Press
Ebook
427
Pages
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About this ebook
Historian Mary A. Hill, who earlier chronicled the life and work of feminist theorist and writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, turns to the private side of Gilman in this annotated collection of love letters the activist wrote to her second husband, Houghton Gilman, from 1897 to their marriage in 1900. She wrote these twenty- to thirty-page letters on an almost daily basis, revealing a private and passionate side very different from the public career that had won her justifiable national and international acclaim. Although Gilman's published writings have understandably received considerable scholarly attention, her private letters have not yet received the attention they deserve.
About the author
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in 1860 in Hartford, Conn. Her traumatic childhood led to depression and to her eventual suicide. Gilman's father abandoned the family when she was a child and her mother, who was not an affectionate woman, recruited relatives to help raise her children. Among these relatives was Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Due to her family situation, Gilman learned independence, but also became alienated from her many female relatives. Gilman married in 1884 and was soon diagnosed with depression. She was prescribed bed rest, which only seemed to aggravate her condition and she eventually divorced her husband, fearing that marriage was partly responsible for her depressed state. After this, Gilman became involved in feminist activities and the writing that made her a major figure in the women's movement. Books such as Women and Economics, written in 1898, are proof of her importance as a feminist. Here she states that only when women learn to be economically independent can true equality be achieved. Her fiction works, particularly The Yellow Wallpaper, are also written with feminist ideals. A frequent lecturer, she also founded the feminist magazine Forerunner in 1909. Gilman, suffering from cancer, chose to end her own life and committed suicide on August 17, 1935. More information about this fascinating figure can be found in her book The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography, published in 1935.
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