Charlotte Perkins Gilman

(courtesy of...er...Google)

As part of my English Literature AS-Level course, I'm reading Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper alongside Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice (yeah, I have no idea why the two link either).

The Yellow Wallpaper was first published in 1892, and raises the issues of women trapped in a patriachal society. At face value, it is the story of an unnamed woman having been taken to a house in the country to recover from an unnamed 'nervous disposition' by her husband, John. Underneath, however, it is a tale that's message is that the seeing the reality of women's oppression can send someone mad or that the only way of seeing reality is by going mad.

Gilman herself had a very interesting life. She was born in July 1860, and during her early childhood her father abandoned her mother with Charlotte and her older brother, leaving them in poverty and the occasional care of her intelligent and liberal aunts. When she was five, Gilman taught herself to read, although her mother forbade the reading of literature. She was also a great student, although she studied just to the age of fifteen, with her favourite subject being (apparently) physics.

In 1884, she married an artist, Charles Stetson, with their child Katharine being born the same year. Upon Katharine's birth, Gilman suffered from a bout of post-natal depression, although many people viewed this as just hysteria and her complaints were mostly ignored. Four years later, in 1888, Gilman and Stetson split in order for Charlotte to get better. Charlotte moved with Katharine to Pasadena, where she became involved in radical feminist movements, becoming involved in groups like the Pacific Coast Woman's Press Association and the State Council of Women, as well as writing for the Bulletin, a feminist newspaper.

After her official divorce from Stetson in 1894, Charlotte sent Katharine to spend some time with her father and his new wife Grace Channing-a close friend of Charlotte's. Upon the death of her mother a year later, Charlotte moved back east and came into contact with her cousin Houghton Gilman, a lawyer, and they soon became romantically involved, and married in 1900.

Houghton Gilman died suddenly in 1934, causing Charlotte to return to Pasadena. Having been diagonsed with terminal breast cancer in 1932, by 1935 Charlotte decided to end her life painlessly with a lethal dose of cholorfom.

One of the most fascinating things about Charlotte Perkins Gilman is the fact that she had such a radical life. She seperated from her husband, and held views surronding issues like Euthanasia that are still talked about today. The Yellow Wallpaper is a stunning work; and it is obvious that she drew on her real-life experience of Charlotte's post-natal depression on the woman in the novel-she has recently had a baby who she rarely gets to see. In my opinion, she seems to be almost an American Virginia Woolf-esque author...