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Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "The Yellow Wallpaper"

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BIOGRAPHY

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[From The Norton Introduction to Literature]

(1860–1935)

Charlotte Anna Perkins was born in Hartford, Connecticut.After a painful, lonely childhood and several years of supporting herself as a governess, art teacher, and designer of greeting cards, Perkins married the artist Charles Stetson. Following Gilman's suffering several extended periods of depression, her husband put her in the care of a doctor who “sent me home with the solemn advice to 'live as domestic a life as...possible,' to 'have but two hours' intellectual life a day,' and 'never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again' as long as I lived.” Three months of this regimen brought her “near the borderline of utter mortal ruin” and inspired her masterpiece, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” In 1900, she married George Houghton Gilman, having divorced Stetson in 1892. Her nonfiction works, springing from the early women's movement, include Women and Economics (1898) and Man-Made World (1911). She also wrote several utopian novels, including Moving the Mountain (1911) and Herland (1915).

 

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