Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) - economist, novelist, and
feminist theoretician - is best known for her classic story of a
woman driven mad for lack of work, "The Yellow Wallpaper." Lane
includes it in this provocative volume with nine other short
stories (previously unavailable in book form) and excerpts from
seven novels, three of them fictional utopias. All the selections
raise questions about the nature of women, the quality of their
lives, work, and relationships. A woman who wakes up in a man's
body realizes the ease that manhood (with pockets and comfortable
shoes) confers. Another woman views her husband's seduction of the
maid not as a personal affront but a crime against all womanhood
and leaves home with her husband's victim. Other women establish
their own businesses or baby-gardens or (in the utopian novel
Herland, reprinted 1979) a whole society. According to Lane's
excellent biographical/critical introduction, Gilman's characters
are "sort of feminist Horatio Algers," aiming not at wealth but at
"autonomy and the facility to use their gifts for the social good";
they usually achieve it through work. Utopia is reachable, Gilman's
work suggests, not through technology but changed attitudes,
changed relationships between women and men. Although Gilman, as
Lane says, is more concerned with ideas than style, her work is
eminently readable; and because the issues she raises are still of
concern, her work is timely, searching, and lastingly important.
(Kirkus Reviews)
THE CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN READER is an anthology of fiction
by one of America's most important feminist writers. Probably best
known as the author of "The Yellow Wallpaper," in which a woman is
driven mad by chauvinist psychiatry, Gilman wrote numerous other
short stories and novels reflecting her radical socialist and
feminist view of turn-of-the-century America. Collected here by
noted Gilman scholar Ann J. Lane are eighteen stories and
fragments, including a selection from Herland, Gilman's feminist
Utopia. The resulting anthology provides a provocative blueprint to
Gilman's intellectual and creative production.
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