ENG 232: American Literature Survey

Charlotte Perkins Gilman and a Woman's Place in America is a pioneering collection that probes how depictions of space, confinement, and liberation establish both the difficulty and necessity of female empowerment. Turning Victorian notions of propriety and a woman's place on its ear, this finely crafted essay collection studies Gilman's writings and the manner in which they push back against societal norms and reject male-dominated confines of space.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: New Texts, New Contexts represents a new phase of feminist scholarship in recovery, drawing readers' attention to Gilman's lesser-known works from fresh perspectives that revise what we thought we knew about the author and her work. Volume contributors consider an array of texts that have not yet enjoyed adequate critical scrutiny, including Gilman's short fiction, drama, and writing for periodicals, as well as her long fiction.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Biography offers the definitive account of this controversial writer and activist's long and eventful life. Cynthia Davis presents new insights into the life of a remarkable woman whose public solutions often belied her private anxieties. This book aims to recapture the drama and complexity of Gilman's life while presenting a comprehensive scholarly portrait.

In Wild Unrest, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz offers a vivid portrait of Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the 1880s, drawing new connections between the author's life and work and illuminating the predicament of women then and now. Horowitz draws on a treasure trove of primary sources to explore the nature of 19th-century nervous illness and to illuminate the making of Gilman's famous short story, "The Yellow Wall-Paper".

This study offers an investigation of a selection of Gilman's short stories in the light of her assertion that women do not have to give up love or work in order to succeed in life. Yet, as this study proves, the problem with this ideology is that there are in fact three factors operating within the equation - marriage, motherhood, and professional life.

This book considers Gilman's place in American literary and social history by examining her relationships to other prominent intellectuals of her era. By placing Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the company of her contemporaries, this collection seeks to correct misunderstandings of the feminist writer and lecturer as an isolated radical.