Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 1860-1935.

from Literature Online biography

CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (3 July, 1860 - 17 August, 1935) is now recognised as perhaps the most important American feminist writer of her time. In her lifetime she was mainly known for non-fiction writings on feminist and social issues, especially for the hugely successful book Women and Economics (1898), which preceded Olive Schreiner's Women and Labour (1911) as the 'Bible of the women's movement'. Now, however, it is her fiction which attracts the most interest: her classic short story 'The Yellow Wallpaper' has a central place in the canon of women's writing, while her witty, satirical utopia Herland (1915) is increasingly seen as an important work of science fiction. A hugely prolific writer, it is only as more of Gilman's work becomes reprinted that a full assessment of her work is becoming possible.

Charlotte Anna Perkins was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1860, to a prominent New England family with a tradition of writing and social activism. She was the youngest of the three children of Frederick Beecher Perkins, a well-known man of letters and public librarian; Harriet Beecher Stowe was her great-aunt, and her family tree also included the eminent Calvinist theologian Lyman Beecher and the writer Edward Everett Hale. Charlotte had a disruptive childhood, however: her father left soon after her birth, and his unreliable financial support meant that the family had to move at least once a year. This neglect had devastating effects on both Charlotte and her mother, Mary; Gilman later described her mother's life as 'one of the most painfully thwarted I have ever known': she had gone from being a 'belle of the ball' surrounded by suitors to a few brief years of marriage -- in which she had three children in three years, one of which died in infancy -- followed by years of poverty and isolation. Mary Perkins was also cold and completely lacking in affection towards her daughter, apparently as a way of protecting her against the possibility of further betrayal.

At the age of sixteen Charlotte Perkins was earning a living by painting advertising cards and teaching art, and at nineteen she began studying art at the Rhode Island School of Design. In 1884 she married a local artist, Walter Stetson, whom she had met at a lecture two years earlier. She had been suffering from depression since shortly after marrying Stetson, and this intensified after the birth of their daughter Katherine on 23 March 1885. Although she described Stetson in her autobiography as a tender, devoted and attractive man, she also gives a sense that the emotional deprivation of her upbringing had led her to marry out of a combination of pity and duty, rather than genuine affection: as she says, there was 'no natural response of inclination or desire, no question of, "Do I love him?" only, "Is it right?"' Recent feminist critics have seen her depression as a direct result of the constrictive nature of late-nineteenth-century married life. Initially, she seemed able to cope with her depression: she travelled to Pasadena, California to visit her friend Grace Ellery Channing, and subsequently was well enough to begin writing: she wrote for People , a weekly labour paper produced in Providence, and contributed poetry to the suffragette organ Women's Journal. Much of this early writing stresses the importance of work; this sprang from a combination of a Puritan ethic of duty and social responsibility and a feminist concern that women should be able to do useful work 'in the world', not just in the home.

Her depression worsened, however, and, at the suggestion of her mother and husband, she consulted one of the most famous 'nerve' specialists of the time, Dr S. Weir Mitchell. At his sanatorium in Philadelphia, she underwent the 'rest cure' which Mitchell had been administering since the 1870s. As a remedy for what was then known as 'neurasthenia' or 'nerve exhaustion', Mitchell prescribed complete isolation and bed rest; to begin with, the patient was not allowed to talk to others, nor to read, write, do any other kind of practical activity or even feed herself. In the long term, Mitchell told Charlotte to devote herself entirely to domestic work, and to raising her child, to do no more than two hours reading a day, and 'never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live'. Understandably, the month she spent in Mitchell's care was absolute torture for her -- she later claimed that she almost lost her mind -- and it provided the inspiration for her most famous work, the nightmarish short story 'The Yellow Wallpaper' (1892).

Charlotte separated from her husband in 1887, and moved to Pasadena in September 1888 with her daughter, in order to be near to Grace Ellery Channing. They were divorced in 1894, by which time Stetson had begun a relationship with Channing; the two were later married, and subsequently took over responsibility for bringing up Katherine. This complex private life was perceived as scandalous at the time, and she was often subjected to personal criticism in the press. Luckily, the press did not know that she had also had a very close, probably lesbian, relationship in 1891-92 with a reporter, Adeline 'Delle' Knapp, whom she refers to in her autobiography as 'Dora'. Life was extremely difficult for Charlotte Stetson in the early 1890s: she was scraping a living from running a boarding-house, working on newspapers and teaching, supporting both her daughter and her mother (until her death in 1892), but also finding time to give lectures on socialism and woman's rights.

From 1891 they lived in Oakland, where she was actively involved with the Nationalist Party, a socialist organisation inspired by the works of Edward Bellamy , author of the bestselling utopian.