Charlotte Perkins Gilman
American feminist whose 'Women and Economics' analyzed gender roles and economic dependence in society.
Most quoted
"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."
— from The Yellow Wallpaper, 1892
"We are the only animal species in which the female depends on the male for food, and in which the male acquires property and gives it to the female in exchange for her sex and reproductive capacity."
— from Women and Economics, 1898
"John is a physician, and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster."
— from The Yellow Wallpaper, 1892
All quotes by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (100)
We are held within the crazy walls of this nursery prison.
The persistent and uniform opposition to every known writer or thinker who has ever attacked the vested interests of the upper classes.
A sexless whole, a brain unsexed, a will unbent by any tie.
The education of the child must accord with the spirit of the age.
I want to live fully, and I want to die fully.
The female of genus homo is economically dependent on the male.
It is the people who constitute the real wealth of a nation.
Art is the expression of the joy of life.
The home is the center of the family, but not the limit of its interests.
We live in a world where the majority of women are economically enslaved.
The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self.
In Herland, there are no men, and yet the society thrives.
I have no patience with this fuss people make over their 'complex' of this and that.
The kitchen is the great battleground of woman's rights.
Life is a struggle, but it is a beautiful struggle.
The woman who creates her own resources is free.
To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the human mind.
I chose chloroform over cancer.
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
Habit is the ballast that keeps the ship steady.
Contemporaries of Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Other Sociologys born within 50 years of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935).