Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland, first published in 1915, is a feminist utopian novel that describes an isolated society composed entirely of women---a progressive, environmentally conscious land where peace and rationality reign and poverty is unknown. Told from the perspective of Vandyk...

In a long-unoccupied mansion, a new mother is confined to what was once a nursery. She is assured by her physician husband that it is a necessary cure to ease her "nervous depression." Isolated and powerless, she becomes obsessed with the peeling, sickly colored wallpaper. In it, she sees what...

In Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman imagines a hidden utopia untouched by men for over two thousand years—an all-female society flourishing in peace, cooperation, and innovation. When three curious male explorers—Vandyck Jennings, Terry Nicholson, and Jeff Margrave—stumble upon this...

“There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s haunting chronicle of crippling depression, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” is a cornerstone of weird fiction. First published in 1892, it has now been given an unsettling yet empathetic...

If some say “Innocence is the greatest charm of young girls,” the answer is, “What good does it do them?” The Crux is the story of group of women who move from New England to Colorado in order to run a boardinghouse for men. One of these women, the young Vivian Lane, falls in love with a...

A groundbreaking feminist masterpiece and one of the most exquisite horror stories in American literature. Diagnosed by her physician husband with a “temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency” after the birth of her child, a woman is urged to rest for the summer in an old...

First published in 1892, The Yellow Wallpaper is a classic short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It's an early work of feminist literature focused on a female protagonist and her relationship with husband John. A great work for studying and casual listening. This version of The Yellow...

Mackenzie Menter performs Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s famous 1892 tale of a woman’s decent into madness. The unnamed narrator secretly keeps a journal and chronicles her decent into madness while subjected to her doctor-husband’s severe postpartum rest cure. She begins to see that a woman...

Presented in the first person, the story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband (John) has rented an old mansion for the summer and the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment, she is forbidden from working, but encouraged to eat well...

In this classic late-nineteenth-century story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a new mother suffering from what we might today call 'post-partum depression', is diagnosed with a nervous disorder. Instructed to abandon her intellectual life and avoid stimulating company, she sinks into a still-deeper...

First published serially in Gilman's magazine The Forerunner from 1909-1910, What Diantha Did is the story of Diantha Bell, a young woman who leaves her home and her fiancé to start a housecleaning business. A resourceful heroine, Diantha quickly expands her business into an enterprise that...

This collection brings together 12 of the finest short stories of prominent American feminist author Charlotte Perkins Gilman. "The Yellow Wallpaper", Gilman's best-known work, was first published in 1892 and represents an important examination of 19th-century attitudes toward women's physical...