Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilmanwas a prominent American feminist, sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform. She was a utopian feminist during a time when her accomplishments were exceptional for women, and she served as a role model for future generations of feminists because of her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle. Her best remembered work today is her semi-autobiographical short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" which she wrote after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth3 July 1860
CountryUnited States of America
The stony-minded orthodox were right in fearing the first movement of new knowledge and free thought. It has gone on, and will go on, irresistibly, until some day we shall have no respect for an alleged "truth" which cannot stand the full blaze of knowledge, the full force of active thought.
What would have been the effect upon religion if it had come to us through the minds of women?
But we were made to believe and not allowed to think. We were told to obey, rather than to experiment and investigate.
Let us inquire what glory there was in an omnipotent being torturing forever a puny little creature who could in no way defend himself? Would it be to the glory of a man to fry ants?
A normal feminine influence in recasting our religious assumptions will do more than any other one thing to improve the world.
We grovel and "worship" and pray to God to do what we ourselves ought to have done a thousand years ago, and can do now, as soon as we choose.
But reason has no power against feeling, and feeling older than history is no light matter.
Death is the essential condition of life, not an evil.
I do not want to be a fly,I want to be a worm!
It will be a great thing for the human soul when it finally stops worshipping backwards.
The children in this country are the one center and focus of all our thoughts. Every step of our advance is always considered in its effect on them-on the race. You see, we are MOTHERS, she repeated, as if in that she had said it all.
A concept is stronger than a fact.
I ran against a Prejudice that quite cut off the view.
In business life, that is, in its material processes, we eagerly accept the new. In social life, in all our social processes, we piously, valiantly, obdurately, maintain the old.