Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Poems Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Reform Darwinism and the role of women in society

Gilman called herself a humanist and believed the domestic environment oppressed women through the patriarchal beliefs upheld by society.[40] Gilman embraced the theory of reform Darwinism and argued that Darwin's theories of evolution presented only the male as the given in the process of human evolution, thus overlooking the origins of the female brain in society that rationally chose the best suited mate that they could find.

Gilman argued that male aggressiveness and maternal roles for women were artificial and no longer necessary for survival in post-prehistoric times. She wrote, "There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver."[41]

Her main argument was that sex and domestic economics went hand in hand; for a woman to survive, she was reliant on her sexual assets to please her husband so that he would financially support his family. From childhood, young girls are forced into a social constraint that prepares them for motherhood by the toys that are marketed to them and the clothes designed for them. She argued that there should be no difference in the clothes that little girls and boys wear, the toys they play with, or the activities they do, and described tomboys as perfect humans who ran around and used their bodies freely and healthily.[42]

Gilman argued that women's contributions to civilization, throughout history, have been halted because of an androcentric culture. She believed that womankind was the underdeveloped half of humanity, and improvement was necessary to prevent the deterioration of the human race.[43] Gilman believed economic independence is the only thing that could really bring freedom for women and make them equal to men. In 1898 she published Women and Economics, a theoretical treatise which argued, among other things, that women are subjugated by men, that motherhood should not preclude a woman from working outside the home, and that housekeeping, cooking, and child care, would be professionalized.[44] "The ideal woman," Gilman wrote, "was not only assigned a social role that locked her into her home, but she was also expected to like it, to be cheerful and gay, smiling and good-humored." When the sexual-economic relationship ceases to exist, life on the domestic front would certainly improve, as frustration in relationships often stems from the lack of social contact that the domestic wife has with the outside world.[45]

Gilman became a spokesperson on topics such as women's perspectives on work, dress reform, and family. Housework, she argued, should be equally shared by men and women, and that at an early age women should be encouraged to be independent. In many of her major works, including "The Home" (1903), Human Work (1904), and The Man-Made World (1911), Gilman also advocated women working outside of the home.[46]

Gilman argued that the home should be socially redefined. The home should shift from being an "economic entity" where a married couple live together because of the economic benefit or necessity, to a place where groups of men and groups of women can share in a "peaceful and permanent expression of personal life."[47]

Gilman believed having a comfortable and healthy lifestyle should not be restricted to married couples; all humans need a home that provides these amenities. She suggested that a communal type of housing open to both males and females, consisting of rooms, rooms of suites and houses, should be constructed. This would allow individuals to live singly and still have companionship and the comforts of a home. Both males and females would be totally economically independent in these living arrangements allowing for marriage to occur without either the male or the female's economic status having to change.

The structural arrangement of the home is also redefined by Gilman. She removes the kitchen from the home, leaving rooms to be arranged and extended in any form and freeing women from the provision of meals in the home. The home would become a true personal expression of the individual living in it.

Ultimately the restructuring of the home and manner of living will allow individuals, especially women, to become an "integral part of the social structure, in close, direct, permanent connection with the needs and uses of society." That would be a dramatic change for women, who generally considered themselves restricted by family life built upon their economic dependence on men.[48]

Feminism in stories and novellas

Gilman created a world in many of her stories with a feminist point of view. Two of her narratives, "What Diantha Did", and Herland, are good examples of Gilman focusing her work on how women are not just stay-at-home mothers they are expected to be; they are also people who have dreams, who are able to travel and work just as men do, and whose goals include a society where women are just as important as men. The world-building that is executed by Gilman, as well as the characters in these two stories and others, embody the change that was needed in the early 1900s in a way that is now commonly seen as feminism.

Gilman uses world-building in Herland to demonstrate the equality that she longed to see. The women of Herland are the providers as there are no men in their society. This makes them appear to be the dominant sex, taking over the gender roles that are typically given to men. Elizabeth Keyser notes, "In Herland the supposedly superior sex becomes the inferior or disadvantaged ..."[49] In this utopian world, the women reproduce asexually and consider it an honor to be mothers. Unlike the patriarchal society that exists outside of Herland, the women do not have surnames for themselves or their children, as they do not believe that human beings should be "claimed" by others. In this society, Gilman makes it to where women are focused on having leadership within the community, fulfilling roles that are stereotypically seen as being male roles, and running an entire community without the same attitudes that men have concerning their work and the community. However, the attitude men carried concerning women were degrading, especially by progressive women, like Gilman. Using Herland, Gilman challenged this stereotype, and made the society of Herland a type of paradise. Gilman uses this story to confirm the stereotypically devalued qualities of women are valuable, show strength, and shatters traditional utopian structure for future works.[50] Essentially, Gilman creates Herland's society to have women hold all the power, showing more equality in this world, alluding to changes she wanted to see in her lifetime.

Gilman's feministic approach differs from Herland in "What Diantha Did". One character in this story, Diantha, breaks through the traditional expectation of women, showing Gilman's desires for what a woman would be able to do in real-life society. Throughout the story, Gilman portrays Diantha as a character who strikes through the image of businesses in the U.S., who challenges gender norms and roles, and who believed that women could provide the solution to the corruption in big business in society.[51] Gilman chooses to have Diantha choose a career that is stereotypically not one a woman would have because in doing so, she is showing that the salaries and wages of traditional women's jobs are unfair. Diantha's choice to run a business allows her to come out of the shadows and join society. Gilman's works, especially her work with "What Diantha Did", are a call for change, a battle cry that would cause panic in men and power in women.[52] Gilman used her work as a platform for a call to change, as a way to reach women and have them begin the movement toward freedom.

Race

In 1908, Gilman wrote an article in the American Journal of Sociology in which she set out her views on what she perceived to be a "sociological problem" concerning the presence of a large Black American minority in America. Calling Black Americans "a large body of aliens" whose skin color made them "widely dissimilar and in many respects inferior," Gilman claimed that the economic and social situation of Black Americans was "to us a social injury" and noted that slavery meant that it was the responsibility of White Americans to alleviate this situation, observing that if White Americans "cannot so behave as to elevate and improve [Black Americans]", then it would be the case that White Americans would "need some scheme of race betterment" rather than vice versa.[53] Gilman was unequivocal about the ills of slavery and the wrongs which many White Americans had done to Black Americans, stating that irrespective of any crimes committed by Black Americans, "[Whites] were the original offender, and have a list of injuries to [Black Americans], greatly outnumbering the counter list." She proposed that those Black Americans who were not "self-supporting" or who were "actual criminals" (which she clearly distinguished from "the decent, self-supporting, progressive negroes") could be "enlisted" into a quasi-military state labour force, which she viewed as akin to conscription in certain countries. Such force would be deployed in "modern agriculture" and infrastructure, and those who had eventually acquired adequate skills and training "would be graduated with honor" – Gilman believed that any such conscription should be "compulsory at the bottom, perfectly free at the top."

Gilman's racism led her to espouse eugenicist beliefs, claiming that Old Stock Americans were surrendering their country to immigrants who were diluting the nation's racial purity.[54] When asked about her stance on the matter during a trip to London she declared "I am an Anglo-Saxon before everything."[55] In an effort to gain the vote for all women, she spoke out against literacy voting tests at the 1903 National American Woman Suffrage Association convention in New Orleans.[56]

Literary critic Susan S. Lanser says "The Yellow Wallpaper" should be interpreted by focusing on Gilman's racism.[57] Other literary critics have built on Lanser's work to understand Gilman's ideas in relation to turn-of-the-century culture more broadly.[58][59]

Animals

Gilman's feminist works often included stances and arguments for reforming the use of domesticated animals.[60] In Herland, Gilman's utopian society excludes all domesticated animals, including livestock. In Moving the Mountain Gilman addresses the ills of animal domestication related to inbreeding. In "When I Was a Witch", the narrator witnesses and intervenes in instances of animal use as she travels through New York, liberating work horses, cats, and lapdogs by rendering them "comfortably dead". One literary scholar connected the regression of the female narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" to the parallel status of domesticated felines.[61] She wrote in a letter to the Saturday Evening Post that the automobile would eliminate the cruelty to horses used to pull carriages and cars.[62]