Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Full text. First published in 1892, The Yellow Wallpaper is written as the secret journal of a woman who, failing to relish the joys of marriage and motherhood, is sentenced to a country rest cure. Though she longs to write, her husband and doctor forbid it, prescribing instead complete passivity. In the involuntary confinement of her bedroom, the hero creates a reality of her own beyond the hypnotic pattern of the faded yellow wallpaper--a pattern that has come to symbolize her own imprisonment. Narrated with superb psychological and dramatic precision, The Yellow Wallpaper stands out not only for the imaginative authenticity with which it depicts one woman's descent into insanity, but also for the power of its testimony to the importance of freedom and self-empowerment for women.

Full text. For anyone who cares about a more fair-minded society where every individual can flourish, The Man-Made World; or, Our Androcentric Culture proves to be an inspirational volume. In this probing critique of "androcentric culture," pioneering feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman (The Yellow Wallpaper, Herland) analyzes with wit and insight the many negative effects of male domination, not only on women in particular but on the welfare of the human race as a whole. Society's long history of male hegemony and female subservience has not enhanced the natural qualities of the human race but rather distorted them, says Gilman, as can be seen in many of society's institutions. In separate chapters she discusses family, art, literature, games and sports, ethics and religion, education, fashion, law and government, crime and punishment, politics and warfare, and industry and economics. In each case she shows how the domineering male influence has caused grievous problems.

"The 'habit of obedience, ' forced in upon the impressible nature of a child, does not develope judgment and will, but does develope that fatal facility in following other people's judgment and other people's wills which tends to make us a helpless mob, mere sheep, instead of wise, free, strong individuals. The habit of submission to authority, the long, deeply impressed conviction that to 'be good' is to 'give up, ' that there is virtue in the act of surrender, --this is one of the sources from which we continually replenish human weakness, and fill the world with an inert mass of mind-less, will-less folk, pushed and pulled about by those whom they obey."

Herland is a utopian novel written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The book describes an isolated society of just women which leads to peace, freedom, and happiness. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an American sociologist and writer who helped influence many future generations of feminists. Gilman famously wrote The Yellow Wallpaper after a bout of postpartum psychosis. Gilman also wrote Herland, a classic utopian novel.