Gilman was born on July 3, 1860, in Hartford, Connecticut, to Mary Fitch Westcott and Frederic Beecher Perkins. She had only one brother, Thomas Adie, who was fourteen months older, because a physician advised Mary Perkins that she might die if she bore other children. During Charlotte's infancy, her father moved out and abandoned his wife and children, and the remainder of her childhood was spent in poverty.[1]
Since their mother was unable to support the family on her own, the Perkinses were often in the presence of her father's aunts, namely Isabella Beecher Hooker, a suffragist; Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin; and Catharine Beecher, educationalist.
Her schooling was erratic: she attended seven different schools, for a cumulative total of just four years, ending when she was fifteen. Her mother was not affectionate with her children. To keep them from getting hurt as she had been, she forbade her children from making strong friendships or reading fiction. In her autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Gilman wrote that her mother showed affection only when she thought her young daughter was asleep.[3] Although she lived a childhood of isolated, impoverished loneliness, she unknowingly prepared herself for the life that lay ahead by frequently visiting the public library and studying ancient civilizations on her own. Her father's love for literature influenced her, and years later he contacted her with a list of books he felt would be worthwhile for her to read.[4]
Charlotte Perkins Gilman as a child, 1868Much of Gilman's youth was spent in Providence, Rhode Island. What friends she had were mainly male, and she was unashamed, for her time, to call herself a "tomboy".[5]
Her natural intelligence and breadth of knowledge always impressed her teachers, who were nonetheless disappointed in her because she was a poor student.[6] Her favorite subject was "natural philosophy", especially what later would become known as physics. In 1878, the eighteen-year-old enrolled in classes at the Rhode Island School of Design with the monetary help of her absent father,[7] and subsequently supported herself as an artist of trade cards. She was a tutor, and encouraged others to expand their artistic creativity.[8] She was also a painter.
During her time at the Rhode Island School of Design, Gilman met Martha Luther in about 1879[9] and was believed to be in a romantic relationship with Luther. Gilman described the close relationship she had with Luther in her autobiography:
We were closely together, increasingly happy together, for four of those long years of girlhood. She was nearer and dearer than any one up to that time. This was love, but not sex ... With Martha I knew perfect happiness ... We were not only extremely fond of each other, but we had fun together, deliciously ...
— Charlotte P. Gilman, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1935)
Letters between the two women chronicles their lives from 1883 to 1889 and contains over 50 letters, including correspondence, illustrations and manuscripts.[10] They pursued their relationship until Luther ended the relationship in order to marry a man in 1881. Gilman was devastated and detested romance and love until she met her first husband.[9]
