SOURCE: "Charlotte Gilman's Reply to Ellen Key," in Current Opinion, Vol. LIV, No. 3, March 1913, pp. 220-21.

In the following essay, the anonymous author contrasts the feminist views of Key with those of the noted American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, most widely known today for her early-twentieth century feminist short story "The Yellow Wallpaper. "

In her recent powerful attack on "amaternal" feminism, Ellen Key, the great Swedish thinker, singles out the words of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, our American feminist philosopher, as presenting the strongest antithesis to her own, and expounding a theory of life which she opposes as dangerous and destructive; the most vital point of difference being their conception of motherliness. Mrs. Gilman's ideal is social motherhood, Ellen Key's a more intensely individual mother. Each writer expresses her thought with unrivalled poetic fervor. Moreover, they represent the two deepest contending forces in the woman movement to-day. "If Ellen...