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Children Background Wallpaper Biography
Gilman called herself a humanist, and believed the domestic environment oppressed women through the patriarchal beliefs upheld by society.[35] Gilman embraced the theory of reform Darwinism and argued that Darwin's theories of evolution only presented the male as the given in the process of human evolution, thus overlooking the origins of the female brain in society which rationally chose the best suited mate that they could find. In doing so, Charlotte believed very seriously that Charles Darwin accidentally subjugated women by installing male sex selection, which requires constant sexual contact as opposed to a more periodic sexuality, thus leading to the oppression of women through rape and violence.[36]
Gilman argued that male aggressiveness and maternal roles for women were artificial and no longer necessary for survival in post-prehistoric times. She wrote, "There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver".[37]
Her main argument was that sex and domestic economics went hand in hand; in order for a woman to survive she was reliant on her sexual assets to please her husband so that he would bring home the bread. From childhood young girls are forced into a social constraint that prepares them for motherhood by the toys that are marketed to them and the clothes designed for them. She argued that there should be no difference in the clothes that little girls and boys wear, the toys they play with, or the activities they do, and described tomboys as perfect humans who ran around and used their bodies freely and healthily.[38]
Gilman argued that women's contributions to civilization, throughout history, have been halted because of an androcentric culture. She believed that the female race was the half of humanity that was underdeveloped, and improvement was necessary to prevent the deterioration of the human race.[39] Gilman believed economic independence is the only thing that could really bring freedom for women, and make them equal to men. In 1898 she published Women and Economics, a theoretical treatise which argued, among other things, that women are subjugated by men, that motherhood should not preclude a woman from working outside the home, and that housekeeping, cooking, and child care, would be professionalized.[40] “The ideal woman," Gilman wrote, "was not only assigned a social role that locked her into her home, but she was also expected to like it, to be cheerful and gay, smiling and good-humored.” When the sexual-economic relationship ceases to exist, life on the domestic front would certainly improve, as frustration in relationships often stems from the lack of social contact that the domestic wife has with the outside world.[41]
Gilman became a spokesperson on topics such as women’s perspectives on work, dress reform, and family. Housework, she argued, should be equally shared by men and women, and that at an early age women should be encouraged to be independent. In many of her major works, including "The Home" (1903), Human Work (1904), and The Man-Made World (1911), Gilman also advocated women working outside of the home.[42]
Gilman argues that the home should be socially redefined. The home should shift from being an “economic entity” where a married couple live together because of the economic benefit or necessity, to a place where groups of men and groups of women can share in a “peaceful and permanent expression of personal life.” [43] Gilman believed having a comfortable and healthy lifestyle should not be restricted to married couples; all humans need a home that provides these amenities. Gilman suggest that a communal type of housing open to both males and females, consisting of rooms, rooms of suites and houses, should be constructed. This would allow individuals to live singly and still have companionship and the comforts of a home. Both males and females would be totally economically independent in these living arrangements allowing for marriage to occur without either the male or female’s economic status having to change.
The structural arrangement of the home is also redefined by Gilman. She removes the kitchen from the home leaving rooms to be arranged and extended in any form and freeing women from the provision of meals in the home. The home would become a true personal expression of the individual living in it.
Ultimately the restructuring of the home and manner of living will allow individuals, especially women, to become an “integral part of the social structure, in close, direct, permanent connection with the needs and uses of society.” This would be a dramatic change for women who generally considered themselves restricted by family life built upon their economic dependence on men. [44]
[edit]Race
With regard to African Americans, Gilman wrote in the American Journal of Sociology: “The problem, is this: Given: in the same country, Race A, progressed in social evolution, say, to Status 10; and Race B, progressed in social evolution, say, to Status 4. . . . Given: that Race B, in its present condition, does not develop fast enough to suit Race A. Question: How can Race A best and most quickly promote the development of Race B?” Gilman’s solution was that all blacks beneath “a certain grade of citizenship” — those who were not “decent, self-supporting, [and] progressive” — “should be taken hold of by the state.[45]”
Gilman also believed old stock Americans of British colonial descent were giving up their country to immigrants who, she said, were diluting the nation's reproductive purity.[46] However, in an effort to gain votes for all women, she spoke out against the literacy requirements for the right to vote at the national American Women's Suffrage Association convention which took place in 1903 in New Orleans.[47]
[edit]Critical reception
The Yellow Wallpaper was initially met with a mixed reception. One critic wrote to the Boston Transcript: “The story could hardly, it would seem, give pleasure to any reader, and to many whose lives have been touched through the dearest ties by this dread disease, it must bring the keenest pain. To others, whose lives have become a struggle against heredity of mental derangement, such literature contains deadly peril. Should such stories be allowed to pass without severest censure?” [48] Positive reviewers describe it as impressive because it is the most suggestive and graphic account of why women who live monotonous lives go crazy.[49]
Although Gilman had gained international fame with the publication of Women and Economics in 1898, by the end of World War I she seemed out of tune with her times. In her autobiography she admitted, "unfortunately my views on the sex question do not appeal to the Freudian complex of today, nor are people satisfied with a presentation of religion as a help in our tremendous work of improving this world."[50]
Ann J. Lane writes in Herland and Beyond that “Gilman offered perspectives on major issues of gender with which we still grapple; the origins of women’s subjugation, the struggle to achieve both autonomy and intimacy in human relationships; the central role of work as a definition of self; new strategies for rearing and educating future generations to create a humane and nurturing environment.”[51]
Recently, she has been criticized for her idea in A Suggestion on the Negro Problem to enlist a civic army of blacks like an AmeriCorps to provide jobs and discipline.
[edit]Quotations by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
“The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society -- more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.”
“There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver.”
“There was a time when Patience ceased to be a virtue. It was long ago.”
“To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the human mind.”
"It is not that women are really smaller-minded, weaker-minded, more timid and vacillating, but that whosoever, man or woman, lives always in a small, dark place, is always guarded, protected, directed and restrained, will become inevitably narrowed and weakened by it."
"The softest, freest, most pliable and changeful living substance is the brain -- the hardest and most iron-bound as well."
"A house does not need a wife any more than it needs a husband."
"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." (from her suicide note).
"Here she comes, running out of prison and off the pedestal; chains off, crown off, halo off, just a live woman
Children Background Wallpaper Biography
Gilman called herself a humanist, and believed the domestic environment oppressed women through the patriarchal beliefs upheld by society.[35] Gilman embraced the theory of reform Darwinism and argued that Darwin's theories of evolution only presented the male as the given in the process of human evolution, thus overlooking the origins of the female brain in society which rationally chose the best suited mate that they could find. In doing so, Charlotte believed very seriously that Charles Darwin accidentally subjugated women by installing male sex selection, which requires constant sexual contact as opposed to a more periodic sexuality, thus leading to the oppression of women through rape and violence.[36]
Gilman argued that male aggressiveness and maternal roles for women were artificial and no longer necessary for survival in post-prehistoric times. She wrote, "There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver".[37]
Her main argument was that sex and domestic economics went hand in hand; in order for a woman to survive she was reliant on her sexual assets to please her husband so that he would bring home the bread. From childhood young girls are forced into a social constraint that prepares them for motherhood by the toys that are marketed to them and the clothes designed for them. She argued that there should be no difference in the clothes that little girls and boys wear, the toys they play with, or the activities they do, and described tomboys as perfect humans who ran around and used their bodies freely and healthily.[38]
Gilman argued that women's contributions to civilization, throughout history, have been halted because of an androcentric culture. She believed that the female race was the half of humanity that was underdeveloped, and improvement was necessary to prevent the deterioration of the human race.[39] Gilman believed economic independence is the only thing that could really bring freedom for women, and make them equal to men. In 1898 she published Women and Economics, a theoretical treatise which argued, among other things, that women are subjugated by men, that motherhood should not preclude a woman from working outside the home, and that housekeeping, cooking, and child care, would be professionalized.[40] “The ideal woman," Gilman wrote, "was not only assigned a social role that locked her into her home, but she was also expected to like it, to be cheerful and gay, smiling and good-humored.” When the sexual-economic relationship ceases to exist, life on the domestic front would certainly improve, as frustration in relationships often stems from the lack of social contact that the domestic wife has with the outside world.[41]
Gilman became a spokesperson on topics such as women’s perspectives on work, dress reform, and family. Housework, she argued, should be equally shared by men and women, and that at an early age women should be encouraged to be independent. In many of her major works, including "The Home" (1903), Human Work (1904), and The Man-Made World (1911), Gilman also advocated women working outside of the home.[42]
Gilman argues that the home should be socially redefined. The home should shift from being an “economic entity” where a married couple live together because of the economic benefit or necessity, to a place where groups of men and groups of women can share in a “peaceful and permanent expression of personal life.” [43] Gilman believed having a comfortable and healthy lifestyle should not be restricted to married couples; all humans need a home that provides these amenities. Gilman suggest that a communal type of housing open to both males and females, consisting of rooms, rooms of suites and houses, should be constructed. This would allow individuals to live singly and still have companionship and the comforts of a home. Both males and females would be totally economically independent in these living arrangements allowing for marriage to occur without either the male or female’s economic status having to change.
The structural arrangement of the home is also redefined by Gilman. She removes the kitchen from the home leaving rooms to be arranged and extended in any form and freeing women from the provision of meals in the home. The home would become a true personal expression of the individual living in it.
Ultimately the restructuring of the home and manner of living will allow individuals, especially women, to become an “integral part of the social structure, in close, direct, permanent connection with the needs and uses of society.” This would be a dramatic change for women who generally considered themselves restricted by family life built upon their economic dependence on men. [44]
[edit]Race
With regard to African Americans, Gilman wrote in the American Journal of Sociology: “The problem, is this: Given: in the same country, Race A, progressed in social evolution, say, to Status 10; and Race B, progressed in social evolution, say, to Status 4. . . . Given: that Race B, in its present condition, does not develop fast enough to suit Race A. Question: How can Race A best and most quickly promote the development of Race B?” Gilman’s solution was that all blacks beneath “a certain grade of citizenship” — those who were not “decent, self-supporting, [and] progressive” — “should be taken hold of by the state.[45]”
Gilman also believed old stock Americans of British colonial descent were giving up their country to immigrants who, she said, were diluting the nation's reproductive purity.[46] However, in an effort to gain votes for all women, she spoke out against the literacy requirements for the right to vote at the national American Women's Suffrage Association convention which took place in 1903 in New Orleans.[47]
[edit]Critical reception
The Yellow Wallpaper was initially met with a mixed reception. One critic wrote to the Boston Transcript: “The story could hardly, it would seem, give pleasure to any reader, and to many whose lives have been touched through the dearest ties by this dread disease, it must bring the keenest pain. To others, whose lives have become a struggle against heredity of mental derangement, such literature contains deadly peril. Should such stories be allowed to pass without severest censure?” [48] Positive reviewers describe it as impressive because it is the most suggestive and graphic account of why women who live monotonous lives go crazy.[49]
Although Gilman had gained international fame with the publication of Women and Economics in 1898, by the end of World War I she seemed out of tune with her times. In her autobiography she admitted, "unfortunately my views on the sex question do not appeal to the Freudian complex of today, nor are people satisfied with a presentation of religion as a help in our tremendous work of improving this world."[50]
Ann J. Lane writes in Herland and Beyond that “Gilman offered perspectives on major issues of gender with which we still grapple; the origins of women’s subjugation, the struggle to achieve both autonomy and intimacy in human relationships; the central role of work as a definition of self; new strategies for rearing and educating future generations to create a humane and nurturing environment.”[51]
Recently, she has been criticized for her idea in A Suggestion on the Negro Problem to enlist a civic army of blacks like an AmeriCorps to provide jobs and discipline.
[edit]Quotations by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
“The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society -- more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.”
“There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver.”
“There was a time when Patience ceased to be a virtue. It was long ago.”
“To swallow and follow, whether old doctrine or new propaganda, is a weakness still dominating the human mind.”
"It is not that women are really smaller-minded, weaker-minded, more timid and vacillating, but that whosoever, man or woman, lives always in a small, dark place, is always guarded, protected, directed and restrained, will become inevitably narrowed and weakened by it."
"The softest, freest, most pliable and changeful living substance is the brain -- the hardest and most iron-bound as well."
"A house does not need a wife any more than it needs a husband."
"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." (from her suicide note).
"Here she comes, running out of prison and off the pedestal; chains off, crown off, halo off, just a live woman
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