Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in America in 1860. Her father left home when she was very young, leaving her mother penniless – she did not even have enough money to look after her children, forcing them to live with relatives. Charlotte often stayed with Harriet Beecher Stowe, her aunt, a feminist and the author of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’. Charlotte read a lot but was never a very successful student. In 1884, she married although her instincts told her that this was a mistake. The couple had one daughter, but Charlotte became so depressed after the birth that she had to consult doctors. It was one of them that advised her to take up writing as a cure. Out of this, her most famous work, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, was born. Perkins Gilman left her husband for her mental health, but later married again, more successfully. Charlotte held some views typical of her times – racism against Afro-Americans, for instance – but her feminism was loud and clear: it was the domination of man at home and at work that made women weak, afraid and even sick. She fought for the vote for women and wrote many sociological studies, novels, short stories and poetry, but none has ever become as well-known as ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. She died in 1935.