Gilman Reconsidered

Charlotte Perkins Gilman is best known for her fiction, most famously the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1899). Both her fiction and nonfiction addressed the sexual, social, and economic oppression of women, and they drew on Gilman's own personal life, including her relationships with men. Literary scholars have claimed Gilman for their own because of the volume and quality of her fiction. Judith Allen suggests a new consideration of Gilman, not in literature, but in feminist theory and history. Allen opens her text with the claim that "Charlotte Perkins Gilman was the most significant Western feminist theorist of the period 1890-1920" (p. 1). Gilman's impressive volume of feminist tracts, including over 1,500 articles and a number of books, outlines her understanding of women's subjugation to men. So then why have literary and not feminist scholars adopted her? Allen explains that the reason is primarily because, later in her life, Gilman subscribed to controversial ideas like eugenics and immigration "restrictivism," and she rejected the term "feminism." But Allen insists that understanding Gilman's context is crucial to understanding her contributions to feminism and feminist theory.

Allen outlines a number of reasons why Gilman deserves reconsideration among feminists. First, Gilman believed that women were subjugated by men. Second, she identified the origins and causes of women's subjugation. Third, she analyzed the operation and perpetuation of sex subjugation and undermined the usual justifications for it; and finally, she proposed a reform program to end women's oppression. Allen suggests that Gilman's intellectual work might even lead to a new terminology to describe early reformers whose ideas may not be so "progressive" and that Gilman made feminism relevant in the Progressive Era, something that has yet to be acknowledged by historians. Allen's goal is to synthesize thirty-plus years of Gilman's prolific written work in the "first systematic book length study" of Gilman's intellectual contributions to feminism (p. 2). Indeed, Allen's text offers a unique insight into an impressive volume of feminist literature; however, whether Gilman is, as Allen claims, the leading feminist thinker in the West remains unresolved.

It was Gilman's personal relationships that had the greatest impact on her politics. Allen grounds many of Gilman's theories specifically in her relations with men and even with some women. As a descendant of the famous Beecher family, Gilman's own lineage may have predisposed her to political activism. But it was her first marriage to struggling artist Charles Walter Stetson that allowed Gilman to recognize what she called women's "sexuo-economic" subjection. Stetson appears to have had a rather healthy sexual appetite and even claimed that sex was necessary for his artistic expression. Gilman feared sex, understanding full well that potential motherhood could compromise her desire to have a career in late nineteenth-century political reform. Stetson's continued demands for sexual relations led to tension in their marriage. Eventually, after the birth of their daughter, Gilman sought the now-famous rest cure that would inspire "The Yellow Wallpaper."

Gilman came to believe that a man's conjugal rights to his wife contributed to women's economic oppression. A woman's only chance at a secure future was marriage, and therefore she had to please her husband in order to get material support. Eventually Gilman would adopt the Reform Darwinist ideas of Lester Frank Ward. Ward believed that something had gone very wrong in humanity's evolution that allowed men to subjugate women and create an androcentric culture. In androcentric society, women's contributions were muted and men dominated social, cultural, political, and economic institutions. According to Gilman, even fashions at the time reflected androcentric culture, because women dressed purposely to appeal to men's carnal desires. Those who failed to secure a husband were doomed to poverty and dependence on other male relatives.

But Gilman did not adopt Ward's ideas uncritically. While...