Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman, around 1900

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (born July 3, 1860 in Hartford (Connecticut) as Charlotte Anna Perkins , † August 17, 1935 in Pasadena (California) ) was an American writer and suffragette . Her literary breakthrough came in 1892 with the autobiographical story The yellow wallpaper about a young wife threatened by madness who tries to escape the systematic death of her personality in this way. Later, Perkins Gilman received a lot of attention , especially with feminist lecture series and studies. She was considered a rousing speaker.

life and work

The daughter of the casual worker Mary Perkins (formerly Mary Fitch Westcott) and the bookseller and writer Frederic Beecher Perkins , a nephew of the writer Harriet Beecher Stowe , grew up in poor circumstances. Most importantly, there was a lack of parental love. The father left the family early. She lived with her mother in Providence , the capital of Rhode Island on the US east coast. After frequent school changes, Perkins Gilman went to the local arts and crafts school ( Rhode Island School of Design ), which had just been founded. After all, she was supported financially by her father. However, she did not graduate.

In 1884 she married the painter Charles Walter Stetson (1858–1911), but left him four years later - a bold step for her time. After the official divorce (1894), she left Stetson and his new partner, the writer Grace Ellery Channing (a friend of Perkins Gilman), their daughter Katherine. During her marriage she suffered from depression , which led her to write (initially the yellow wallpaper ). Now she went to San Francisco , where she found both a close friend and a teacher in the socialist writer Helen Campell, who was 21 years her senior . She attended many women's congresses, which led her to Berlin and London ; there she met Beatrice Webb and George Bernard Shaw , among others . In 1900 she entered into her second marriage to her cousin George Gilman , a lawyer in New York , which lasted until his death (1934).

Man-Made World - Herland

From 1902 she worked publicly as a speaker and journalist. She published her own monthly Forerunner (1909-1916). She had the ability to get to the heart of complicated issues in a common understandable way, often with humor. Her main themes were women's liberation and peace. Her main theoretical work is likely to be her study Women and Economics from 1898, which has been translated into seven languages. The study insists on unrestricted career choice and economic independence for women.

Her first novel What Diantha did she published in Forerunner in 1909/1910 . The protagonist Diantha designs Gilman as a heroine who sets out to abolish the patriarchal relics of feudalism in the capitalist economy by rationalizing housework.

In her 1911 book The Man-Made World or Our Androcentric Culture , Perkins Gilman was the first to use and define the term androcentricism . In 1915 she started the Women's Peace Party with her friend Jane Addams . In the same year, her novel Herland was published , which describes a fictional, all- women dwarf and mountain republic in South America and is considered a "pure didactic play". The "Herland women" do not know war. In 1922, Perkins Gilman moved with her husband to Norwich, Connecticut , where she wrote the religious book His Religion and Hers and began her autobiography. Ten years later, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After her husband's death (1934), she moved to California to be closer to her daughter. On August 17, 1935, she committed suicide by inhaling chloroform . In a suicide note she commented:

No pain, no misfortune or 'broken heart' entitles one to end one's life as long as one still has the strength to serve the community. But with all usefulness behind you, when you are certain that death is inevitable, one of the simplest human rights is to choose a quick, easy death instead of a terrible and slow one.

Works

  • The Yellow Wallpaper , story, 1892, German The yellow wallpaper (and other stories) Stuttgart 1992, Vienna 2005, Hanover 2013
  • The Yellow Wallpaper , narration, 1892, German The yellow wallpaper , English / German, Zurich 2018, Dörlemann Verlag
  • In this our World , Poems, 1893
  • Women and Economics: A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution , Study, Boston 1898, German Mann und Frau. The economic relations of the sexes as the main factor of social development , Dresden and Leipzig 1901
  • Concerning Children , Boston 1900
  • The Home: its Work and Influence , New York 1903, German Our home, its influence and its effect , Dresden 1913
  • Human Work , New York 1904
  • What Diantha Did , Boston 1910, German Diantha or the value of housework , ed. and with an afterword by Petra Schaper Rinkel, translated by Margot Fischer, Vienna / Berlin 2017, Mandelbaum Verlag, ISBN 978-3-85476-547-9 .
  • Moving the Montain , utopian novel, 1910
  • The Man-Made World or Our Androcentric Culture , study, New York 1911
  • Herland , utopian novel , 1915
    • Herland . Translation Sabine Wilhelm. Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1980 ISBN 978-3-499-14607-7 rororo Neue Frau. In 1994 the Rowohlt edition was 83,000
  • His Religion and Hers: A Study of the Faith of Our Fathers and the Work of Our Mothers , Study, New York 1923
  • Unpunished , detective novel, written in 1929, German Mr. Vaughns at the end of Munich 1998
  • The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography , New York 1935

literature

  • Ann J. Lane (Ed.): The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader. New York 1980.
  • Mary Armfield Hill: Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Making of a Radical Feminist 1860-1896. Philadelphia 1980.
  • Joanne B. Karpinski (Ed.): Critical Essays on Charlotte Perkins Gilman. New York 1992.
  • Catherine Golden (Ed.): The Captive Imagination: A Casebook on "The Yellow Wallpaper". New York 1992.
  • Denise D. Knight: The Diaries of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Charlottesville, VA 1994.
  • Sybille Duda, Luise F. Pusch (eds.): WahnsinnsFrauen. Volume 2, Frankfurt / M. 1995, pages 9-38 therein.
  • Interdisciplinary working group on women's studies: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and her time , Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz 1997, ISBN 3-923443-45-5 .
  • Cynthia J. Davis: Charlotte Perkins Gilman. A biography. Stanford, Calif. 2010, ISBN 978-0-8047-3889-7 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c fembio , accessed on August 18, 2011.
  2. ^ Website of the Freundesgesellschaft , accessed on August 18, 2011
  3. ↑ Cf. Petra Schaper Rinkel: Afterword. In: Petra Schaper Rinkel (ed.): Diantha or the value of housework. Vienna / Berlin 2017.
  4. ^ Spartacus , accessed August 18, 2011
  5. ↑ Cf. Inge Holm: Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland. In: Wolfgang Jeschke (Ed.): Heyne Science Fiction Magazin # 1. Munich 1981, p. 175.
  6. ↑ Quoted from Rolf Löchel , accessed on August 18, 2011
  7. ↑ According to Rolf Löchel , accessed on August 18, 2011. This novel was only published in 1997 in English.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gilman, Charlotte Perkins
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer and suffragette
DATE OF BIRTH July 3, 1860
PLACE OF BIRTH Hartford, Connecticut
DATE OF DEATH 17th August 1935
Place of death Pasadena, California