Mary A. Hill (Essay Date 1980)

SOURCE: Hill, Mary A. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Feminist's Struggle with Womanhood." In Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Woman and Her Work, edited by Sheryl L. Meyering, pp. 31-50. Ann Arbor, Mich.: UMI Research Press, 1989.

In the following essay, originally published in 1980, Hill discusses the development of Gilman's feminism within the confines of her prescribed roles as wife and mother.

In a letter written from Belmont, New Hampshire, September 2, 1897, Charlotte Perkins Stetson exclaimed, "Thirty-five hundred words I wrote this morning, in three hours!" A book's chapter in one sitting; a successive six-week dizzy pace of morning writing; elaborate consultations with her closest critic, Houghton Gilman, soon to be her second husband; and thus was Women and Economics dashed into print. Jane Addams, already emerging as one of America's foremost social reformers, expressed her gratitude to Charlotte, her "pleasure and satisfaction," her "greatest...