Charlotte Gilman Identity

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, an activist, author, and poet was born on July 3, 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut. Gilman is most known for her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a feminist piece on women gaining independence. Gilman is also known for her other works on topics such as the necessity of work for woman as well as her ideas on a utopian society, and social activism for women. Gilman is also credited with starting a newspaper, The Forerunner. Gilman was born into a prominent family yet faced troubles when her father left the family. Being an activist led Gilman to fight for change as women of her day faced many issues with social acceptance. Identity is a recurrent theme in the work of Gilman; pieces of her identity can be perceived

Gilman resisted the desire to follow the model of centuries of women in choosing marriage over a profession but intended to pursue her goal of sacrificing personal pleasure to doing good and serving the world. Gilman hesitated for two years between her desire for marriage and her fear of it. Charlotte and Charles had a daughter, Katherine in March of 1885. After having Katherine, Charlotte began suffering from episodes of depression. This part of Charlotte’s life is seen in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” when John, the narrator’s husband and a physician, “assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 1). This part of Charlotte’s identity is seen in the identity of the narrator in her short story. The troubles that Charlotte is facing in her real life are being addressed in the work she is creating. The story also indicates that John thinks there is nothing wrong with her, that the narrator just needs space. In Charlotte’s real life, her doctor suggested going on a trip and seeing a friend. The instances of Charlotte’s actual life are all tied into her

She felt the Beecher call to a larger world service; she was determining that for her this would be reform of women’s condition in society. Walter pursued Gilman under the assumption the because he loved her, she must return the feeling, that his love gave him a right to her. In Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the experience of her marriage is expressed as a negative reversal of the positively utopian Herland. Herland is the liveliest and most feminist of her works. The story recounts the adventure of three men from the US in search of an all-female country. The men were astonished to find the women indifferent to their charms as males and to view the sophisticated environment these women have build. In the story, Gilman validates motherhood by making it the nation’s highest office. Her reverence for mothers is both personally compensatory and socially reformist (Kessler 36). This book showed what Gilman wanted the world to be, she wanted utopia but her reality was the