Charlotte Perkins Gilman Analysis

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s main purpose in writing Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution is to explain the economic dependence that women had in 1898 and try to explain why this dependence exists. The author starts off by comparing human conditions to the conditions of other species of animals and concludes that there is one major difference in humans compared to other species. This difference is that sex relation is also an economic relation, where women are dependent on men to provide them food, shelter, etc. (Gilman 5). Charlotte Gilman reinforces her statement by stating “To take from any community its male workers would paralyze it economically to a far greater degree

The author starts by explaining the belief that a women’s economic dependence is a result from events that happened many years ago. She says that from the beginning of time, men would fight with each other over females, and the victor would then mate with the female. This went on for years until at some point, the males realized that it would be easier to enslave the females than fight over them. Because of this, women were no longer allowed to take care of themselves, and the men shouldered the duty to take care of the female that he enslaved (60-62). As time progressed, men were able to adapt and acquire knowledge about the progressing environment around them (64). Women, on the other hand, did not acquire this knowledge and that put men thousands of years in advance of women (9, 64-67). This ideology led to the discrimination of women in 1898, where women were not allowed to work even if they were good at the job they wanted (67-68). Then, Gilman says that humans are heading toward more equality on a hereditary level because young boys are inheriting some genes from their mother and young girls are inheriting some genes from the father (69-70). The author finishes by saying that humans are inevitably moving toward higher civilization, and that the more equality there is within a civilization, the

The reason that I found this sentence important is because it pretty much sums up what the entire book is about, women having a dependence on men. Also, this sentence shows that in addition to tangible things, such as food, women also depend on men for intangible things, like happiness and fame. Essentially, this sentence says that a women’s entire life depends on the man that she decides to marry, which just shows how much discrimination there was toward women back in the 19th and early 20th century. Another thing that I found interesting about this sentence is the difference of how it was viewed back then, compared to how it would be viewed today. It seems like back when this book was written, it was generally accepted that women were dependent on men and this sentence would be viewed as normal. If you said this sentence today, you would be completely wrong in doing so because women today work in the same fields as men and are not considered economically dependent like they were back then. Lastly, this sentence stood out to me because it shows just how important of a decision it was when a woman was choosing a man to marry. The choice on who to marry would be the difference between a woman living a