Charlotte Perkins Gilman Books

Please say this review is helpful to you. They told me that if I post another unhelpful review they're going to kill my ferret.

It was obvious to anyone who has known Peyser that something like this was bound to happen. I refer, of course, to Peyser's bout of aphasia during his freshman year at the College. Clearly this mysterious illness has returned in book-length, perhaps even a global, form. We may never really know what Peyser is up to in this book. Oh, for some Young and Champollion to decode this, the Rosetta Stone of post-modernism!

I don't usually tolerate so-called theory, but this was fun!

Don't let the title fool you--this is a down-to-earth, engaging work that deserves to be read by a much larger audience than the academic field it's probably relegated to.

This is a powerful, bleak book. None of the writers Peyser deals with is particularly optimistic. The possible exception is Howells but there is a dark undertow even to his work which Peyser makes sure we see. So a book about utopia is also a strangely, depressing read. 40 years or so after Brooke Farm, who would have thought things would have gotten so sad? Of course it was the turn the century and the best of the Western thinkers were thinking sad and pessimistic thoughts. And now here we are at the turn of another century and we have this powerful, bleak book. Have we come all that far after this century of bloodthirsty carnage? Is Utopia even further away than it was 100 years ago? Read Peyser's powerful, bleak book and see if you can answer some of these sad questions yourself. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

You know, this is not the sort of book I would normally read. But there it was, suddenly, on the coffee table one night. How it got there I have no idea. Just curious, I began to leaf through the pages, and the words began to resonate with me. Unable to sleep, I read it through in one sitting by candlelight. The next morning, I began to look at things around me differently. First, I removed several unessential appliances from the house in an effort to simplify my existence. Then it became time to de-clutter and I threw out several items I realized I had no more use for. Then, and this all seemed so logical in light of the things I'd read, I divorced the wife and sent her on her why. Sure, she cried a bit, but I knew I was doing the right thing. And I've never regretted it. This is, indeed, one of the best books I've read all year.

WHAT!? "Appropriate for academic and women's studies collections" sounds like the kiss of death for a literary work, and that should not happen to Benigna Machiavelli. This utterly delightful work was passed to me by a (male) friend and, well, ok, I confess it sat on my shelf for months while I continued with my usual fare of crime, warfare, and science fiction. Then one day it was raining too hard to go out and I ran out of books. This is something I usually take great care to prevent as I love a good yarn when I have the time, usually a good "feisty" yarn. In desperation I picked Benigna up and started to read . . . and was hooked. Ms. Gilman clearly understands and delights in the human situation. She describes a young girl facing and solving the problems of her day with wit and humor that goes way beyond her gender. So I say, "To hell with dusty "women's studies collections." This is a great read for anyone with even a smidgeon of interest in the workings of the human mind, and it is an especially great read for any man interested in women.

This work by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is the fictional memoir of a girl grown to womanhood on her own terms. At an early age she decides to become a "good villian" and use her considerable intellect and common sense to make her own life, and the lives of those around her, better. The heroine of the story tackles everything, from obtaining supplies for her school, saving her sister from a would-be seducer, and rescuing the family from their own abusive father, to running her own boarding house, matchmaking for her sister, and helping her mother heal and grow. She succeeds, with wit and style. And Charlotte Perkins Gilman succeeds in creating a highly readable work that both teaches and heals the reader by portraying a better way of life, without preaching.

here's the text from the back of the paperback edition:

"Written in the late 1920's, this long-lost mystery by the author of such early feminist classics as The Yellow Wall-paper is a major literary find. Gilman's first and only detective novel spoofs the genre as it deconstructs the murder of a pernicious attorney who has been shot,stabbed,bludgeoned, strangled, and poisoned! The feisty husband-and-wife detective team that solves the murder presents a model of true partnership, while the unfolding details of the case offer poignant evidence of the injustice that poor and powerless women can suffer at the hands of a brutal man. Gilman weaves a case for women's freedom and empowerment into a mystery rich in twists and turns, colorful characters, red herrings, suspense, and wry humor."

There you have it, a lost classic from Charlotte Perkins Gilman. What are you waiting for? Get this little gem of a book, and discovery a forgotten 'classic in the making'.

A vintage whodunit, this book includes wry humour, a subtle feminist commentary regarding women in 1920's society & even a butler! The story is a thoroughly enjoyable diversion (particularly needed in recent weeks). An excellent choice for Charlotte Perkins Gilman fans & anyone who enjoys a good mystery.

Gilman's book and her ideas on the role of women in the struggles of all humans for equality and liberty are as relevant in the 21st century as they were in the 19th. The book should be on the reference shelf of every policy maker and used as a basic book on government and political science. Her personal struggles are shared by many women and men who face the devastating effects of inequality and the abuse of liberty by others who seek the "four creatures of greed and power: fame, fortune, lust, and luxury". Gilman's message is that women (and men) should be careful to not copy the behavior of other men and other women who have sought these "four creatures".

Gilman shows the reader she is going with men in the workplace , but wants to show women are just as hard or harder workers at home than the men outside of the house. She wants to show how men think women are weaklings and she shows them wrong with her strong words against the put down of a man.

If you are researching the life and work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman this book will be an incredible resource for you. The author of the book does a great job of presenting historical context that shaped Gilman's attitudes. Details of Gilman's life are insightful and useful for connecting her life with her works of both fiction and nonfiction. And, the reason that this is one of the best books about Gilman is that it provides a very straight-forward and concise outline of her philosophies concerning socialism and feminism. Overall, this has been the most useful and insightful book about Gilman that I have found so far, and I would highly recommend that if you are doing research about her, start with this book.

This slender casebook of an academic search represents the first authoritative text of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wall-Paper since it was originally published in 1892. It includes book reviews and excerpts of literary and social commentaries that reflect the story's critical reception; it publishes lists of editorial emendations and variants of the story in important editions since 1892 and it gives a listing of textual sources for more than one hundred reprintings of the story in anthologies and textbooks.

The enterprise, itself, deserves recognition for its prodigious and painstaking scholarship and meticulous editing. A product of an undergraduate course on scholarly editing, Julie Bates Dock gave her class a "simple collation exercise" on Gilman's The Yellow Wall-Paper. Students and teacher alike became more and more enthused as they searched for relationships among various editions of the story. This enthusiasm resulted in a collaborative publication by Julie Bates Dock and three of her students.

In a chapter entitled The Legend of The Yellow Wall-Paper, Dock not only recounts how the story has become one of literature's perennial bestsellers, but also warn us that "in its twenty-five-year odyssey of rediscovery by literary critics...the story has picked up along the way an assortment of blemishes and distortions, from textual anomalies to skewed accounts of its publication history to misinformation about its contemporary reception." This should be enough to make any academic want to research its history.

The evidence of casual distortions that change the import of original texts as shown in the present case emphasizes the importance of textual criticism and traditional modes of criticism. Dock says, "...the use of documents is affected by critical trends and by critics' biases and expectations...The feminist critics of the early 1970s, intent on establishing women authors in the American literary canon, had a stake in portraying the story as a victimized piece of literature. The notion that Gilman suffered condemnation from editors and readers outside the story tidily echoed the narrator's victimization within the story." Dock then goes on to cite two examples where major feminist critics came to unexamined and hasty conclusions about the publication of the story.

Dock also provides evidence to argue that omission of a few words distorts Gilman's focus. For example, the words, "in marriage," in the sentence, "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that (in marriage)." Gilman was against the institution of marriage, but not necessarily against men in general!

Legends that Gilman had to struggle to get her story published, that most readers thought of it as a "ghost story," that it received an especially distasteful reception from the male medical community are also put to rest, as evidence simply does not support these beliefs.

Dock also points out discrepancies in Gioman's own accounts as well, such as her inaccurate and varying dates and titles as well as her claim that Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, her own physician, altered his treatment of neurasthenia after reading The Yellow Wall-Paper. This is, as Dock points out, a case of "he says/she says conundrums."

The book is wonderfully embellished with photographs of Charlotte Perkins Stetson, W.D. Howells, Horace E. Scudder and Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, as well as with other visuals.

The book also cites interesting excerpts from Gilman's autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Correspondence. It explains or compiles painstaking commentaries on textual matters, selection of copy, publication history, authorial practice and preference, editorial emendations and many other publication matters as well as reviews of the story which appeared in various magazines. The Appendix provides a history of the printing of The Yellow Wall-Paper from 1892 until 1997.

This is a scholarly book, to be sure, but it is one that is also extremely interesting. In addition to learning the history of The Yellow Wall-Paper, we also learn much about Gilman's motivations, her aesthetics of writing and her own views on both marriage and men.

Nothing spectacular to write home about. When I bought this book, I was hoping for the old radio dramas that I used to listen to when I was a kid on Sunday nights. I will say that there were some very good stories. But a few left you rather wanting.

This book shows how Gilman was truly thinking during her times of her youth to her death. She speaks in her own words which makes it great for researching for term papers. I used this book last Fall to research a paper I was doing for Art of Literature class at College. It helped me trememdously and I think it will help others who read it to learn or read it to do research of her life in a paper for school. It is definitley an A+ in my book of books on Gilman's life.

Todd McGowan has made a monumental contribution to our understanding of the canon controversies, and done it with an admirable and astonishing brevity and focus. The readings of particular authors, contextualized with respect to their moment of entry into the canon of literary studies (and with respect to a number of other interesting and provocative issues), are a model of what cultural studies can be, when undertaken by someone with an authentic concern for how literature functions vis-a-vis the social (symbolic) order . What should especially not be overlooked,in my opinion, is McGowan's immeasurable --and, again, marvellously condensed-- contribution to our understanding of the dilemma between essentialistic, rational, enlightenment-based notions of the self versus postmodern dissolution of the self into what are often celebrated by theorists (of all stripes) today under the banner of "multiple subject positions," or some related notion of "discursively-determined subjectivity" (see the last chapter for a terse tour-de-force critique of this dilemma). It must be stressed that McGowan's deployment of Lacanian concepts is not obscured by excessive jargon or mathematical abstractions. He not only wields such terminology with expertise, but makes psychoanalytic concepts intelligible and politically relevant. I highly recommend this excellent book.

Gilman was a woman who went through much pain and suffering this book tells of her life being taken away from her by her Psychiatrist whom she hated for the rest of her. She speaks of being put on the Rest Cure for Post-Pardom Depression and how the doctors told her not to have anymore children. She speaks of her 8 years being locked up in her own house and in an insane asylum and she tells how her doctor put her on a regamine for the rest of her life. She also speaks of how she was not able to write and generate what she loved most--writing; because her doctor told her not too. She speaks of her publication of her first short stories and "The Yellow Wallpaper" and many others of her stories. She also or the author also speaks of how Gilman commits suicide in the end. It gets really depressing, but you really see how Psychologists thought in the 19th century and how a great writer had to live her life.