ABSTRACT
This essay examines Charlotte Perkins Gilman's (1860–1935) earliest use of the dramatic form to challenge Herbert Spencer's social Darwinism by offering feminist adaptations of Darwin's theories of natural and sexual selection. As she does in her career-defining manifesto, Women & Economics (1898), Gilman in her lesser-known plays deploys her own brand of reform Darwinism to serve the feminist cause. Despite her absence in histories of modern drama, Gilman actively participated in the establishment and development of this literary, historical, and cultural movement. Placing Gilman in the context of nineteenth-century naturalist theatre, this essay recovers two short dramatic dialogues she published in 1890, “A Dramatic View” (later renamed “The Quarrel”) and “Dame Nature Interviewed.” These “practice plays” demonstrate Gilman's efforts to use the dramatic form in her early plays to “rehearse” her nascent reform of Darwinist theories for Women & Economics, which she would also continue to develop dramaturgically for decades thereafter.
