One of the 19th century and early 20th century's champions for equal rights and opportunities for women, Charlotte Perkins Gilman drew upon the strengths gleaned from a childhood in a single-parent home. Throughout her life, she struggled with what she characterized as the tyranny of a male-dominated culture that made insufferable the plight of so many women locked in ill-fated marriages and barred from most meaningful social roles and responsibilities outside the home. The results of her own frustrations and the birth of her child led to severe depression, and following the suggestions of her artist husband, Charles Stetson, Charlotte sought the help of the Philadelphia physician S. Weir Mitchell, celebrated for his treatment of "nervous disorders." She submitted to his treatment of complete rest, lots of food, and no intellectual stimulation, a regimen that drove her close to insanity. "The Yellow Wall-Paper" was written in response to her experiences while under his care. The story's influence brought wide attention to the mentally disabled and fomented critical modifications in the treatment of depression. Charlotte Perkins Gilman took her celebrated name from her second husband, George Houghton Gilman, a New York lawyer and a first cousin. Their socially conscious marriage freed her to pursue her several causes, and she became a steady writer, publishing widely in various genres including essays, novels, and poetry. Faced with lingering pain from cancer, Charlotte Perkins Gilman took her own life in 1935, at the age of 75. |
2003 McGraw-Hill Higher Education