Let us revere, let us worship, but erect and open-eyed, the highest, not the lowest; the future, not the past!
Charlotte Perkins Gilman Quotes
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| Birth: | 3rd July, 1860 |
| Death: | 17th August, 1935 |
| Nationality: | American |
| Profession: | Editor, Lecturer, Novelist, Sociologist, Writer |
About
Gilman was born on July 3, 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut, to Mary Perkins and Frederick Beecher Perkins. Much of Gilman's youth was spent in Providence, Rhode Island. What friends she had were mainly male, and she was unashamed to call herself a "tomboy." She attended seven different public schools, and was a correspondent student of the Society to Encourage Studies at Home but studied only until she was fifteen. Her natural intelligence and breadth of knowledge always impressed her teachers, who were nonetheless disappointed in her because she was a poor student. Her favorite subject was "natural philosophy," especially what later become known as physics. In 1878, the eighteen-year-old enrolled in classes at the Rhode Island School of Design with the monetary help of her absent father, and subsequently supported herself as an artist of trade cards. She was a tutor, and encouraged others to expand their artistic creativity. She was also a painter.
After moving to Pasadena, Charlotte became active in organizing social reform movements. As a delegate, she represented California in 1896 at both the Suffrage Convention in Washington, D.C. and the International Socialist and Labor Congress which was held in England.[21] In 1890, she was introduced to Nationalism, a movement which worked to "end capitalism's greed and distinctions between classes while promoting a peaceful, ethical, and truly progressive human race." Published in the Nationalist magazine, her poem, Similar Cases was a satirical review of people who resisted social change and she received positive feedback from critics for it. Throughout that same year, 1890, she became inspired enough to write fifteen essays, poems, a novella, and the short story The Yellow Wallpaper.
As a successful lecturer who relied on giving speeches as a source of income, her fame grew along with her social circle of similar-minded activists and writers of the feminist movement.
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