The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion

Please place any background information or resources associated with this author and her work here.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1860-1935. She was a U.S. fiction, non-fiction, and poetry writer along with being an editor and a feminist theorist. Most of her work involves the status and oppression of women. She knew early on that economic dependence of women meant a physical and emotional slavery for them. In addition, the assumption that women's roles were that of mothers and homemakers (without other choices) was a prescription for personal and cultural incapacity. She even wrote Women and Economics (1898) to illustrate the effect of economic dependence.

Her short stories continue these themes with the most famous, The Yellow Wallpaper, depicting an actual "cure" for depression in women and the sad outcome of that cure. Her most famous novel is, Herland, which is the second book the the trilogy we will be reading.

While long, the wikipedia article is very informative:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlott...

I'm really looking forward to reading the trilogy and discussing it with you all. I've read the Yellow Wallpaper and thought it astounding, especially for its time.

Pip, I agree with you. She's one of my favorite authors. While I've read Herland, the second in the trilogy, this is a first read of this work for me too. I am sure I won't be disappointed.

The Librivox recording of Moving The Mountain is done by Elizabeth Klett. She is an especially talented reader, and one of my favorites.

Gilman is (and was) mainly known as an icon of first wave feminism. However, many of the ideas propagated in the Mountain should be understood in the wider context of the Progressive Era. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progress....

Thanks Wendell. Great information.

Some information and pictures:
https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/sch...

I supposed men never to be so desperate as to dream of a world without women. But, desperate or not, there are more than a few male-only utopia’s.
Some are mentioned here: http://io9.com/5060135/could-you-live...