The first collection of lectures and sermons that Charlotte Perkins Gilman delivered in the first four years of her career The last decades have seen a resurgence of interest in Charlotte Perkins Gilman, now considered among the most important thinkers in US history. She is best known for fiction—such as the classic short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” (1892)—and nonfiction, including her manifesto Women and Economics (1898), a work of intersectional sociology avant la lettre. Nevertheless, as a young writer, Gilman made her living delivering lectures. One cannot know Gilman without some knowledge of this body of lectures; this book fills that critical gap in Gilman scholarship. Since the recovery of Charlotte Perkins Gilman began in the late 1960s and continued with the republication of “The Yellow Wall-Paper” in the 1970s, her image in cultural memory has been increasingly celebrated. Andrew J. Ball presents here fifty previously unpublished texts. They trace the development of Gilman’s thoughts on diverse subjects like gender, education, labor, science, theology, and politics—forming an intellectual diary of her growth. These lectures are not just a testament to Gilman’s personal evolution, but also a crucial contribution to the foundations of American sociology and philosophy. The Essential Lectures of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1890–1894 marks a historic moment, unveiling the hidden genius of Gilman's oratory legacy.

The focus of Carol Farley Kessler's work is how Charlotte Perkins Gilman developed as a writer and how she imagined a full-blown utopia for women. This book, which offers a fresh reading of Gilman's fiction, fills a void in Gilman scholarship, in feminist utopian scholarship, and in American literary studies. Kessler provides three journeys through Gilman's life: "A Biographical Exploration'' discusses facets of her life having a substantial impact upon her utopian writing. Four themes influence this development: the legacy of ancestral expectations; her relationships to father, mother, and daughter; the experience of two marriages and a divorce; and her friendships with women. Gilman and her "Prancing Young Utopia" presents three stages in the development of Gilman's utopian writing. First, she imagined neighborhoods-writing alternately fiction and nonfiction. Second, she tested in fiction the expression of utopian principles explained in her nonfiction. Finally, she created the whole society in her 1915 satire Herland. All of the foregoing writing represents Gilman's effort to imagine in fiction solutions that she recommended in her 1898 feminist treatise, Women and Economics. "Writing to Empower Living'' connects Gilman's biography to her utopian writing as both personal expression and public activism. The writing can be understood as "equipment for living." Ten hard-to-locate utopian short stories and chapters from four novels conclude the volume.

" ... The first comprehensive assessment of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's richly complex feminism."--Back cover.

She has just given birth to their child. He labels her postpartum depression as »hysteria.« He rents the attic in an old country house. Here, she is to rest alone – forbidden to leave her room. Instead of improving, she starts hallucinating, imagining herself crawling with other women behind the room's yellow wallpaper. And secretly, she records her experiences. The Yellow Wall-Paper [1892] is the short but intense, Gothic horror story, written as a diary, about a woman in an attic – imprisoned in her gender; by the story. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's feminist novella was long overlooked in American literary history. Nowadays, it is counted among the classics. CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (1860–1935), born in Hartford, Connecticut, was an American feminist theorist, sociologist, novelist, short story writer, poet, and playwright. Her writings are precursors to many later feminist theories. With her radical life attitude, Perkins Gilman has been an inspiration for many generations of feminists in the USA. Her most famous work is the short story The Yellow Wall-Paper [1892], written when she suffered from postpartum psychosis.

Known to her contemporaries as a fervent advocate of reform on social, economic, and religious fronts, designated an "optimist reformer" by William Dean Howells, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) today is celebrated more as a writer of novels and short stories, particularly Herland and The Yellow Wallpaper, than as the author of the many social and political essays that originally made her so prominent. The essayists in this spirited volume return to Gilman's primary focus by reminding us that the main purpose of her writing was reform. Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Optimist Reformer looks at Gilman's legacy for women at the end of the twentieth century; in doing so its contributors reassess both her reformist ideas and our own views on fin de siecle feminism. Gilman scholarship has indeed moved on from the much needed recovery of her work to more critical treatments that allow us to acknowledge elements now regarded as unacceptable. As a result, the essayists here reappraise Gilman and her writings in ways that directly address hithertofore overlooked points, such as her racism, her almost willful disregard of issues of class, and her broadly essentialist view of women. The effect of this collection is thus twofold: Gilman and her works are both reassessed in light of current feminist thought and presented in the context of her own time. A constant theme is the recognition of her unwavering belief that things could be changed for the better; it is this persistent optimism that made her such a forceful voice for reform. Thus the essayists demonstrate that engagement with Gilman's reformist views is still pertinent for feminist debate today.

Provides timely comparative analysis from internationally known contributors.

“These essays exemplify all the virtues of interdisciplinarity in consideration of that most multidisciplined of writers, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The contributors simultaneously clarify and complicate our understanding of some of the more vexed areas of Gilman's work by engaging saliently with her theories of ethnicity, class, prostitution, and the dynamics of gender; posing difficult questions to contemporary feminist scholars; and providing sensitive and insightful guidance to a well-chosen and wide range of texts.”—Janet Beer, author of Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Studies in Short Fiction