ABSTRACT
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a committed feminist and social economist who intended to change society by insisting on an ethical, rational, indeed, “natural” order that acknowledges and encourages mothering as its basis, regardless of sex. For Gilman, personal fulfillment and individual economic freedom could be obtained only under the condition of a more closely knit social structure, whereby private or domestic labors are reorganized as social labors and primarily undertaken as a service to society. Gilman proposed that the tasks that Margaret G. O’Donnell refers to as women’s “traditional roles as housekeepers, child-rearers, and teachers” be restructured as common social occupations. Gilman was a feminist, indeed a committed one, but she was not a futurist who envisioned the world of the modern-day “supermom,” jetting around the corporate world as easily as her male counterparts.
