Charlotte Perkins Gilman (The University of Adelaide, 2012)
Born Charlotte Anna Perkins on July 3, 1860, in Hartford Connecticut. Butterworth (2001) states that her mother was Mary (Fitch) Westcott and her father was Frederick (Beecher) Perkins, a close relative to the influential writer Harriet Beecher Stowe. Yet, her father abandoned the family leaving Mary to raise two children on her own. Charlottes education suffered greatly due to the mobile tendancies of her family. When discussing Charlotte’s childhood experiences, Dunn (1997) informs us 'Charlottes mother decided to prepare her daughter for hardships by denying affection. Not only did she withhold from Gilman natural physical contact, but she also saw to it that Gilman had no intimate friends. Gilman turned to books for solace'. Charlotte had an artistic nature and attended Rhode Island School of Design. Her formal education covered eight years in seven different schools, and at the age of fifteen her formal education was finished (Bily, 2003). Yet she determined to educate herself further. As a maturing woman she lived independently earning an income as a private and commercialised artist, but her aspirations were to become a writer (Dunn,1997).
Charlotte met painter Charles Walter Stetson and denied his request for marriage for more than two years, eventually in 1884 they were married. Here Bily (2003) acknowledges Charlotte’s independent nature ‘Although Stetson respected Gilman and understood her objections to a traditional marriage, it was not to be a happy union’. The following year, 1885, they had a daughter Katherine; but Charlotte fell victim to bouts of depression after her daughters birth, which is recognised today as postpartum depression. Charlotte was treated for hysteria by neurologist S. Weir Mitchell and presecribed total bed rest and rest of anything that could stimulate her mind to create tension and trauma. Dunn (1997) states 'that Doctor Mitchell of Philadelphia recommended a rest cure and the chronicle of that treatment became the inspiration for her famous work, The Yellow Wallpaper. Charlotte feared for her sanity and could not accept her change in life roles as traditional wife and mother against her own desires. In 1887 she and Katherine left her husband and travelled to California to continue her work as artist, poet and publisher to short stories.
In 1892 Charlotte was granted a divorce from Charles which resulted in Katherine returning into her fathers care (Spartacus Educational, 2012). Charlotte Perkins Gilman was quite the intellectual and produced influential writings during the 1800s and 1900s. In 1898 she publishes Women and Economics which focuses on the ineqaulity between men and women and helped her secure a position as a social theorist. Bily (2003) believes 'It made Gilman a sought-after writer and lecturer and a financially independent woman at last'. In 1900 Charlotte married a second time, her cousin a George Houghton Gilman, within this marriage Charlotte felt content as Bily (2003) agrees 'It was understood from the beginning that they would continue their separate careers, and this freedom, along with the freedom to enjoy sex without the fear of pregnancy, gave her great contentment'. From 1909 to 1916 Charlotte established a magazine, The Forerunner which enabled her to publish women's ideas and ideas of social reform. This publication complimented her artistic nature which featured short stories, poetry, essays and opinion pieces.
George Houghton Gilman provided Charlotte with companionship and support until his death in 1934 (Dunn,1997). Previously Charlotte had been diagnosed with terminal breast cancer and so retired to her daughters side in California soon after where she chose to spare her family the ordeal of losing a loved one through cancer choosing to end her own life than to suffer. Charlotte Perkins Gilman committed suicide on 17th August, 1935 at the age of seventy-five. In her suicide note, McMillan (1935 cited in Spartacus Educational, 2012) unveils, "When all usefulness is over, when one is assured of unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one. I have preferred chloroform to cancer."
