Unknown Story
Storyboard Text
- Introduction
- Her early life
- Beginning of her writing career
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born on July 3, 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut. Her work in social reform, as well as her writing , makes her one of America's most influential women of her time. She is known for being a proponent of women's rights, an advocate of Nationalism, and one of the first women to write openly on the inequality of medical care for women in the late 19th / early 20th century.
- Feminism
- Because Gilman's father, Frederick Beecher Perkins, abandoned the family when Gilman was very young, her early life was comprised of living with strong influential women. Since Gilman's mother could not support the family on her own, she and her brother spent a great deal of time with their aunts on their father's side : Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe( abolitionist and author of Uncle Tom's cabin ) and Isabella Beecher Hooker ( American Suffragist ).
- Political views
- Suffragism
- Nationalism
- When she was 24, Gilman relunctantly married Charles Walter Stetson and gave birth to their daughter, Katherine, a year later. After the birth of Katherine, Gilman suffered from postpartum depression. She felt disconnected from her family, which inspired her to write The Yellow Wallpaper, a semi-biographical tale of postpartum psychosis, which is now her most recognized work. The story first appeared in New England Magazine and received a great deal of criticism for its controversial content.
- The last years of her life
- She became very involved in women's right and the advocation of the Equal Rights Amenddment. She protested and wrote on issues such as equality in the workplace, women's health care, women's rights to divorce, and women's right to maintain their own finances. Gilman even spoke out against Charles Darwin, proposing that his views on survival of the fittest are inherently sexist and no longer applicable in a society where reproduction is no longer the ultimate goal.
- When Gilman was not writing, she was actively participating in a variety of rallies, from Suffragism to Nationalism, to make sure her voice was heard.As she became increasingly political, she turned her focus to Nationalism, a cause she believed would lead to a better world for men and women, alike. But Gilman's views aligned with Nationalism years before her political involvement, as seen in her utopian work of fiction Herland.
- After divorcing Stetson and living a very active life in politics, Gilman eventually fell in love with her cousin, Houghton Gilman, whom she was very happy to marry. They lived together in Connecticut until he died suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage. It was while living in Pasadena that Gilman was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. After living with the disease for 3 years, Gilman, an advocate of euthanasia, took matters into her own hands and committed suicide on August 17, 1935 by overdosing on chloroform
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