Literary Birthday – 3 July – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born on 3 July 1860 and died on 17 August 1935.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman Quotes
- There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver. (Women and Economics)
- It is not that women are really smaller-minded, weaker-minded, more timid and vacillating, but that whosoever, man or woman, lives always in a small, dark place, is always guarded, protected, directed and restrained, will become inevitably narrowed and weakened by it. (Literary Ladies Guide)
- The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society – more briefly, to find your real job, and do it. (Literary Ladies Guide)
- Life is a verb, not a noun. (Human Work)
- To be surrounded by beautiful things has much influence upon the human creature; to make beautiful things has more. (Women and Economics)
- Audiences are always better pleased with a smart retort, some joke or epigram, than with any amount of reasoning. (The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an American feminist, humanist, lecturer, writer, and publisher. In 1894, she began writing, with her short story, ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’, which deals with the portrayal of a woman’s mental breakdown. Gilman’s other notable works include Women and Economics (1898), which advocates for women’s economic independence, and the utopian feminist novel, Herland (1915). From 1909 to 1916 she edited and published the monthly Forerunner, a magazine of feminist articles and fiction. She also contributed to other periodicals. She joined Jane Addams in founding the Woman’s Peace Party in 1915. She has been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.
Source for photograph: Encyclopædia Britannica, Library of Congress
by Amanda Patterson
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