The Yellow Wall-Paper, Herland, and Selected Writings
4/5
()
About this ebook
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935), author of the celebrated short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," is regarded by many as a leading intellectual in the women's movement in the United States during the first two decades of the twentieth century. Michael Kimmel is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at SUNY, Stony Brook, and the author of Manhood in America: A Cultural History. Amy Aronson is a professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Fordham University.
Read more from Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Yellow Wallpaper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 1 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Yellow Wallpaper: 125th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Herland Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Yellow Wallpaper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gothic Classics: 60+ Books in One Volume Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings50 Feminist Masterpieces you have to read before you die (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Yellow Wallpaper Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Greatest American Short Stories: 50+ Classics of American Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Yellow Wallpaper and Other Writings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Herland: original edition 1909-1916 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Greatest American Short Stories (Vol. 1) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Best American Short Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings50 Halloween Stories you have to read before you die (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Yellow Wallpaper (Legend Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5WOMEN & ECONOMICS Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Yellow Wallpaper (Legend Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Yellow Wallpaper Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHerland Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to The Yellow Wall-Paper, Herland, and Selected Writings
Related ebooks
Barren Ground: - Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSheila Watson: Essays on Her Works Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGreat Awakening Meta Davis Cumberbatch, 'Mother of the Arts' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGendered Lives in the Western Indian Ocean: Islam, Marriage, and Sexuality on the Swahili Coast Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTailings: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Stories My Grandmother Told Me: A multicultural journey from Harlem to Tohono O'dham Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBoy and Girl Tramps of America Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRuth Hall Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Happy-Go-Lucky Morgans Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNot Just Black and White Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Charles Waddell Chesnutt: Pioneer of the Color Line Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Monk: A Romance Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Let It Bang: A Young Black Man's Reluctant Odyssey into Guns Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Copycat And Other Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsApartheid’s Leviathan: Electricity and the Power of Technological Ambivalence Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCane Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Little America in Western Australia: The US Naval Communication Station at North West Cape and the Founding of Exmouth Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBenito Cereno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Zero Dark Thirty: The Shooting Script Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Middle Five: Indian Boys at School Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Bridals: 'Some Women have modest countenances and natures all their life-time'' Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFauxccasional Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHERMAN MELVILLE Ultimate Collection: 50+ Adventure Classics, Philosophical Novels & Short Stories: Moby-Dick, Typee, Omoo, Bartleby the Scrivener, Benito Cereno, Billy Budd Sailor, Redburn, White-Jacket, Pierre, Israel Potter, The Piazza, Etchings of a Whaling Cruise, John Marr and Other Sailors… Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCross Body Lead Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pauline Johnson: Selected Poetry and Prose Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lustra Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Top 10 Short Stories - Anton Chekov Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Tenant of Wildfell Hall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Contingency in Madagascar: PHOTOGRAPHY • ENCOUNTERS • WRITING Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe History of Mary Prince Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Classics For You
Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Farewell to Arms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master & Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5East of Eden Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Women (Seasons Edition -- Winter) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Animal Farm: A Fairy Story Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Wuthering Heights (with an Introduction by Mary Augusta Ward) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Learn French! Apprends l'Anglais! THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY: In French and English Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sense and Sensibility (Centaur Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5As I Lay Dying Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5For Whom the Bell Tolls: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bell Jar: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Count of Monte-Cristo English and French Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Republic by Plato Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rebecca Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Titus Groan Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Jungle: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Persuasion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Yellow Wall-Paper, Herland, and Selected Writings
51 ratings1 review
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Terry O. Nicholson, Jeff Margrave, and Vandyck Jennings are confident, self-assured men on an adventure. Having heard about a strange country where no men exist, they are intrigued and determined to uncover the mysteries of a female dominated society. They are certain that not only will they be welcomed, but that there will be no obstacles to their curiosity. So, when finally the three men manage to infiltrate Herland, they are astonished to discover themselves prisoners and completely at the mercy of a bunch of women who are not only highly intelligent, but capable of taking care of themselves.Charlotte Perkins Gilman serialized the novel Herland in The Forerunner, a magazine which she wrote and edited on her own between 1909 and 1916. Considered a feminist classic, the utopian novel explores such themes as female independence, environmental responsibility, motherhood, and societal values such as freedom from war and overpopulation. In Herland, females are able to reproduce through parthenogenesis and all share in the raising of children. Faced with a restricted environment, women in Herland regulate their reproduction so as not to be faced with the negative consequences of overpopulation. All members of the society work toward the betterment of their community without hatred, jealousy, or selfishness. With the introduction of men, there are challenges to maintain the status quo. The three male characters represent the paternalistic values of modern society – possession of women being one.One of the interesting aspects of Herland is the absence of traditional female attributes, including overly emotional personalities, long hair, feminine dress, or weakness. Gilman portrays these stereotypical female endowments as something which is only necessary to please men.These women, whose essential distinction of motherhood was the dominant note of their whole culture, were strikingly deficient in what we call “femininity.” This led me very promptly to the conviction that those “feminine charms” we are so fond of are not feminine at all, but mere reflected masculinity – developed to please us because they had to please us, and in no way essential to the real fulfillment of their great process.” – from Herland, page 60 -Gilman also emphasizes the importance of education. The women of Herland are depicted as highly intelligent and curious, willing to spend long hours learning all they can to improve their society.But very early they recognized the need of improvement as well as of mere repetition, and devoted their combined intelligence to that problem – how to make the best kind of people. First this was merely the hope of bearing better ones, and then they recognized that however the children differed at birth, the real growth lay later through education. - from Herland, page 61 -Another major theme of the novel is that of faith and religion. Gilman addresses traditional Christian beliefs where God is imagined as a man, and introduces the idea of a more universal, loving Power embodied in the framework of a Mother Spirit.Their great Mother Spirit was to them what their own motherhood was – only magnified beyond human limits. That meant that they felt beneath and behind them an upholding, unfailing, serviceable love – perhaps it was really the accumulated mother-love of the race they felt – but it was a Power. – from Herland, page 111-In her idealized society, Gilman negates the necessity of worship, reverence and obedience to a higher being, and instead spins a religion which is centered on selflessness and the power of goodness.“We do things from our mothers – not for them. We don’t have to do things for them – they don’t need it, you know. But we have to live on – splendidly – because of them; and that’s the way we feel about God.” - from Herland, page 111 -Here was a religion which gave to the searching mind a rational basis in life, the concept of an immense Loving Power working steadily out through them, toward good. It gave to the “soul” that sense of contact with the inmost force, of perception of the uttermost purpose, which we always crave. It gave to the “heart” the blessed feeling of being loved, loved and understood. It gave clear, simple, rational directions as to how we should live – and why. – from Herland, page 115 -Herland is a philosophical novel which questions the basic “rules” of behavior and a woman’s place in society. Gilman imagines what a community might look like without male influence and paints a picture of a society where there is no war, no negative impact on the environment, no overpopulation, no judgment of a punishing God, no hatred, no sadness, no jealousy, no poverty, no wants or needs left unfulfilled. In Gilman’s society all is good, all are educated, and even sex is seen as unneeded. Herland is a sanitized society which is only threatened when men arrive on its soil. Within the pages of her utopian novel, it is easy to see Gilman’s belief that women had a large role to play in the the betterment of society, and that only when women take it upon themselves to be independent can society be improved.Herland reads more like a feminist primer than a novel at times. I enjoyed watching Gilman construct her perfect society, but I never really felt engaged or connected to the women characters who are almost void of emotion. Similarly, I found the men to be stereotypical and predictable.I do think this novel is an important piece of literature which would be a great stepping off point for discussion of the larger issues impacting society. Despite it being written in the early part of the twentieth century, many of its themes are still relevant to today’s world. I believe it would be interesting to compare Gilman’s work with that of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which is a distopian view of the future in a world dominated by men.Readers interested in expanding their ideas of society, and those wanting to learn more about feminist literature, would be well-served by reading Herland.