ABSTRACT
The seeds of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s radical feminism were rooted in an early struggle for independence, self-assertion, and self-respect. Raised primarily within a female kinship network necessitated by her father’s absence, and deprived from early infancy of the motherly affection for which she yearned, Charlotte nonetheless disclosed in her diaries and notebooks a growing strength of character, a playful, lively, independent personality. Charlotte’s friendship with Martha Luther provided the kind of support, encouragement, and mutual affection historians believe was central to the experience of most nineteenth-century women. Charlotte Gilman’s economic struggles as a separated and subsequently divorced woman, and earlier the child of a divorced woman, made her especially sensitive to woman’s economic plight. For Charlotte Gilman, women’s most essential goal was the building of an economic power base. The one significant factor leading to “artificial” femininity, Gilman believed, was non-voluntary alienating domestic servitude. Gilman examined the effects of women’s psychological dependence on men.
