ABSTRACT
The words of a modern feminist aptly describe Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s attitude toward the question of woman: “animated less by a wish to demand our rights than by an effort toward clarity and understanding.” The subjection of women originated, Gilman began, in prehistoric times when the males first monopolized all social activity and women were confined to motherhood and domestic duties. Woman demonstrates certain typically “feminine” traits because she occupies a special, narrow position in society: “she is merely working for her own family—in the sex-relation—not the economic relation; as a servant to the family instead of servant to the world.” Gilman saw in woman’s consuming interest in fashion a reflection of the female’s part in the sexuo-economic relation. Because of the woman’s dependence on sexual attraction for a livelihood, she bears the sex decoration of the species—the reverse of that obtaining in the lower animals.
