Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an American writer, lecturer and social reformer, best known today for the story 'The Yellow Wallpaper' (1892). In Women and Economics (1898) she argued that women's economic dependence on men within marriage stunted both women and society. She proposed professional cooking, childcare and housework so that women could work outside the home, and imagined an all-female society in the novel Herland (1915). Her ideas shaped early twentieth-century feminism, though she also held racist and eugenicist views that scholars now examine critically.

Key ideas

• Women's economic dependence on their husbands is the root of their subordination.
• This 'sexuo-economic relation' exaggerates differences between the sexes and holds back human progress.
• Housework, cooking and childcare should be professionalised and shared, freeing women for paid work.
• Much of what passes for human culture is in fact an androcentric, man-made world.

Major works

• Women and Economics (1898)
• The Yellow Wallpaper (1892)
• The Home: Its Work and Influence (1903)
• The Man-Made World (1911)
• Herland (1915)

In the Book corner

• Women and Economics 1898 · Intermediate
  A book-length essay, subtitled A Study of the Economic Relation between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution, by the…

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