Gilman's Character At Work example essay topic

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a writer, educator, philosopher, and activist. She was one of many female intellectual leaders around the turn of the century. Do to her radical beliefs Gilman received the most criticism for her writings dealing with feminism. Gilman was an extraordinary woman who throughout her life battled for women's rights and suffrage in a patriarchal male society of the early 20th century. Through these battles, Gilman developed a controversial conception of womanhood. Born in 1860, Gilman was self-educated woman with many talents.

Some of which included the arts, teaching, and writing. Raised without a father, her mother supported both Charlotte, and her older brother Thomas. They lived in a state of poverty, filth, and isolation and often moved from place to place leading to a lonely bitter life. Then at the age of 24 she married Charles Stetson and assumed the traditional roles of being a wife and mother, only before suffering a nervous breakdown causing her to divorce her husband and eventually leave her child. She then began to write and engage in many of the social women's movements of the time. Looking back at her humble, yet extraordinary life experiences of a female within a patriarchal system, Gilman redefined the term womanhood, declaring women equal to men in all spheres of life.

This "new woman" was to be an intelligent, well-informed, and well-educated person capable of forming and expressing her own thoughts and ideas. This "new woman" would be economically and socially independent as well as politically active. This "new woman" would be able to compete, share, and hold all duties and responsibilities within the workplace, and at the same time still be a loving, nurturing, compassionate, and sensitive individual, like the traditional woman of the home. Gilman's visions were challenged by all who read them, while her feminist ideas were called "the cult of true womanhood", yet she never backed down. Gilman's writings of tensions and struggles between marriage and career, social expectations, and personal goals continue to influence women's decisions even today. Her arguments greatly heightened our overall awareness of understanding the power of social norms on an individual, especially women.

Although most of Gilman's works dealt with women and education, Gilman's ultimate goal was to develop self-governing men and women who could connect knowledge of her works with action. Gilman once stated, "Until we can see what we are, we cannot take steps to become what we should be". Gilman's fiction was an essential part of her writing. It stated her ideological worldview of things, thus giving her works profound interest and uncanny power. Gilman herself envisioned a completely ideal utopian society in which "profit motive is removed from social life and where genuine community dominates" (1). A prime example of this would be her novel Herl and.

In this book, Gilman suggests how society might be different if motherhood rather than manliness became the cultural ideal. Here women live in a land where neither the private home nor the nuclear family existed, the characteristics of love, service, ingenuity, and efficiency became the dominant social norms and motherhood became a social rather than a biological category. This meant that care for the children was focal point for all the women and survival and advancement was dependent on this. With this in mind the interests of the women, children, and the state become one. What may be good for one may not be good for the community. Gilman's progressive idea's show in her feminist literature that what is good for men isn't necessarily good for women.

This is what educated women wanted to prove to the patriarchal male society that women's suffrage is for the best. One of Gilman's prerequisite for genuine autonomy for all adults is economic independence. Here ALL citizens, both men and women alike, leave their homes each day to do "world-work". Children attend their work through school, child centers or what we call today daycare. Finally at the end of the day the family is reunited in the home, which in turn is a place of love, affection, and relaxation, not a place of work for any household members. Normal household work is now accomplished as a public activity for those who choose it (2).

A prime example of this would be the assigned reading Making a Change. In this short story a troubled mother, Julia, is having a hard time raising her newborn son while the mother-in-law, Greta, and father, Frank, are about to lose their nerves over the baby's crying. With this setting the stage we see Gilman's character (s) at work. As she often does in her literature the characters who seek support for their young often comes from someone outside the immediate family (i.e. Mrs. Greta Gordins, Franks mother) and in some cases not even a relative at all. Mr. Gordins plays her typical male, one who is decent, sensitive, though conventional; one who when pressed is capable of change.

Now back to the story. At the climax of the story we see Mrs. Julia Gordins nerves all but fried. Here is when change is about to occur; .".. We haven't been half good enough to you, Frank and I! But cheer up now-I've got the loveliest plan to tell you about! We are going to make a change!

Listen now!" (3) Now we see the changes. From this point in the story Greta takes over the childcare for their child as well as other mothers in the building, while she hires a maid to do the cleaning. Julia in the mean time begins to give music lessons once again and all is well. As we saw with Mrs. Julia Gordons, women around the turn of the century emphasized their social responsibility in order to participate in "human work" and become active members of the economy as well as the community. Another one of Gilman's goals for autonomy was none other than education. In her mind education was an effective way to transform society, so the most effective way to feminize society was to feminize education.

Education is a teaching tool to show women how to dedicate their lives towards a common good rather than the familial good that our patriarchal society stressed. With this in mind; she along with many other notable women of her time devised an educational system that de-emphasized masculine and feminine character traits in order to fully enable women to enter and act as full and equal members of society. Through a gender-balanced educational system, men and women would develop into socially active intellectuals, both capable and both self-reliant human beings. Throughout her lifetime and even today scholars perceive Gilman as a feminist.

Yet, Gilman's feminist ideas clearly have a place within the progressive movement. Her works stressed the importance of an equal society and were the strongholds during the fight for women's suffrage. During most of her lifetime Gilman was a highly respected and internationally known figure. However, many people both men and women alike rejected her comments towards the rights of women. It wasn't until the contemporary women's rights movement of the 1970's was Gilman's literature fully appreciated by all (4)..