As a social reformer, intellectual, and feminist, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) railed against the subordinate economic position of women in the United States around the turn of the...Show moreAs a social reformer, intellectual, and feminist, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) railed against the subordinate economic position of women in the United States around the turn of the twentieth century. Gilman lived and wrote at a time of radical social reform: a time in which industrialization took over the production processes of America; in which Victorian ideals about domesticity were being reshaped; and in which Darwin’s evolution theory dominated discourses regarding the perfect civilization. This thesis focuses on two of Gilman’s publications, her economic pamphlet Women and Economics (1898) and her utopian novel Herland (1915), and analyzes the rational approach that Gilman used to challenge and destabilize the abiding social standards and gender divisions.Show less
