Charlotte Perkins Gilman Quotes

Shall you complain who feed the world? Who clothe the world? Who house the world? Shall you complain who are the world Of what the world may do? As from this hour You use your power The world must follow you!
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Human life consists in mutual service. No grief pain misfortune or 'broken heart' is excuse for cutting off one's life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
New York - that unnatural city where every one is an exile, none more so than the American
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Only as we live, think, feel, and work outside the home, do we become humanly developed, civilized, socialized.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
John dear!" said I in the gentlest voice, "the key is down by the front steps, under a plantain leaf!"That silenced him for a few moments.Then he said—very quietly indeed, "Open the door, my darling!""I can't," said I. "The key is down by the front door under a plantain leaf!"And then I said it again, several times, very gently and slowly, and said it so often that he had to go and see, and he got it of course, and came in.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
It's time we woke up, women are pretty much people, seems to me. I know they dress like fools- but who´s to blame for that? We invent all those idiotic hats of theirs, and design their crazy fashions, and, what's more, if a woman is courageous enough to wear common-sense clothes -and shoes- which of us wants to dance with her? Yes, we blame them for gratifying us, but are we willing to let our wives work? We are not. It hurts our pride, that's all. We are always criticizing them for doing mercenary marriages, but what do we call a girl who marries a chump with no money? Just a poor fool, that's all. And they know it. As for Mother Eve- I wasn't there and I can't deny the story, but I will say this. If she brought evil into the world, we men have had the loin's share of keeping it going ever since- how about that?
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction.I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
But reason has no power against feeling, and feeling older than history is no light matter.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
John says I musn't lose my strength, and has me take cod liver oil and lots of tonics and things, to say nothing of ale and wine and rare meat.Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick. I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.But he said I wasn't able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there; and I did not make out a very good case for myself, for I was crying before I had finished.It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness I suppose.And dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head.He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake, and keep well.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
John says if I don't pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Mitchell in the fall.But I don't want to go there at all. I had a friend who was in his hands once, and she says he is just like John and my brother, only more so!Besides, it is such an undertaking to go so far.I don't feel as if it was worth while to turn my hand over for anything, and I'm getting dreadfully fretful and querulous.I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time.Of course I don't when John is here, or anybody else, but when I am alone.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able, - to dress and entertain, and order things
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Through it [literature] we know the past, govern the present, and influence the future.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
But I MUST say what I feel and think in some way — it is such a relief! But the effort is getting to be greater than the relief.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Now why should that man have fainted? But he did,and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
I am glad my case is not serious! But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing. John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
I really have discovered something at last. Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move - and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very ' bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so:...
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
[The Yellow Wallpaper] was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
And woman should stand beside man as the comrade of his soul, not the servant of his body.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
You see, they were Mothers, not in our sense of helpless involuntary fecundity, forced to fill and overfill the land, every land, and then see their children suffer, sin, and die, fighting horribly with one another; but in the sense of Conscious Makers of People.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
They say women have no conscience about laws, don't they?" Mrs MacAvelly suggested. "Why should we?" answered her friend. "We don't make 'em– nor God– nor nature. Why on earth should we respect a set of silly rules made by some men one day and changed by some more the next?
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
the human mind was no better than in its earliest period of savagery, only better informed
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Its time we woke up,” pursued Gerald, still inwardly urged to unfamiliar speech. “Women are pretty much people, seems to me. I know they dress like fools - but who’s to blame for that? We invent all those idiotic hats of theirs, and design their crazy fashions, and what’s more, if a woman is courageous enough to wear common-sense clothes - and shoes - which of us wants to dance with her?
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Here she comes, running, out of prison and off the pedestal: chains off, crown off, halo off, just a live woman.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
it is only in social relations that we are human...to be human women must share in the totality of humanity's common life. Women, forced to lead restricted lives, retard all human progress. Growth of organism, the individual or social body requires use of all of our powers in four areas: physical, intellectual, spiritual and social
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
In all our discussions and speculations we had always unconsciously assumed that the women, whatever else they might be, would be young. Most men do think that way, I fancy. "Woman" in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether. But these good ladies were very much on the stage, and yet any one of them might have been a grandmother. We looked for nervousness—there was none. For terror, perhaps—there was none. For uneasiness, for curiosity, for excitement—and all we saw was what might have been a vigilance committee of women doctors, as cool as cucumbers, and evidently meaning to take us to task for being there.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Woman" in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Never in all her life had she imagined that this idolized millinery could look, to those who paid for it, like the decorations of an insane monkey.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Never in all her life had she imagined that this idolized millinery could look, to those who paid for it, like the decorations of an insane monkey.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
As for mother Eve - I wasn't there and can't deny the story, but I will say this. If she brought evil into the world, we men have had the lion's share of keeping it going ever since.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Death? Why all this fuss about death? Use your imagination, try to visualize a world without death! Death is the essential condition to life, not an evil.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman