Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilmanwas a prominent American feminist, sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform. She was a utopian feminist during a time when her accomplishments were exceptional for women, and she served as a role model for future generations of feminists because of her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle. Her best remembered work today is her semi-autobiographical short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" which she wrote after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth3 July 1860
CountryUnited States of America
If fifty men did all the work, / And gave the price to five, / And let those five make all the rules - / You'd say the fifty men were fools, / Unfit to be alive.
There should be an end to the bitterness of feeling which has arisen between the sexes in this century.
To speak broadly, the troubles of life as we find them are mainly traceable to the heart or the purse.
In our steady insistence on proclaiming sex-distinction we have grown to consider most human attributes as masculine attributes, for the simple reason that they were allowed to men and forbidden to women.
In great cities where people of ability abound, there is always a feverish urge to keep ahead, to set the pace, to adopt each new fashion in thought and theory as well as in dress - or undress.
When the mother of the race is free, we shall have a better world, by the easy right of birth and by the calm, slow, friendly forces of evolution.
Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time.
Death? Why this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.
It is told that Buddha, going out to look on life, was greatly daunted by death. "They all eat one another!" he cried, and called it evil. This process I examined, changed the verb and said, "They all feed one another," and called it good.
The one predominant duty is to find one's work and do it.
To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the human mind.
The softest, freest, most pliable and changeful living substance is the brain-the hardest and most iron-bound as well.
It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.
If we once admit that our life is here for the purpose of race-improvement, then we question any religion which does not improve the race, or the main force of which evaporates, as it were, directing our best efforts toward the sky.... Improvement in the human race is not accomplished by extracting any number of souls and placing them in heaven, or elsewhere. It must be established on earth, either through achievement in social service, or through better children.