The Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Newsletter
The Gilman Society was founded by Shelley Fisher Fishkin and Elaine Hedges in 1990.
Spring 2007
Vol. XVII No. 1
President
Cynthia J. Davis
University of South Carolina-Columbia
From the Executive Director
Executive Director
Robin L. Cadwallader
Saint Francis University of Pennsylvania
Greetings Gilman Society Members—
I will have a more detailed membership
report at our annual business meeting in May
at the ALA. However, I am happy to report
here that our membership is growing. We
have twenty new members; three of these are
lifetime. Most of our new members are the
result of our efforts at the SAWW conference
in November 2006. I wish to thank Carla
Shoff, one of our new members, for her
generosity in staffing the Gilman Society
table at that conference. Her work on our
behalf was amazing!
Please remember, that our membership
year runs from September 1 through August
31. And, since our organization is entirely
dependent on membership fees to maintain
our solvency, I urge you to check the date on
the address label attached to this newsletter.
If the date says 2007, then you need to pay
dues immediately to be counted as a paid
member. Additionally, dues for 2008 will be
due September 1, so at this point, you may
want to consider paying for two years.
Thank you for your continued support of
the Gilman Society. I hope to see all of you
at the two Gilman panels and our annual
business meeting at the ALA.
Vice President of Publications
Sari Edelstein
Brandeis University
Newsletter Editor
Charlotte J. Rich
Eastern Kentucky University
Webweaver
Jean Lee Cole
Loyola College in Maryland
From the President
Hello and goodbye! I wind up my tenure as
Society president this spring. Jennifer Tuttle
is running unopposed for the position, and,
having worked with her when she served as
our Executive Director, I know she will make
a splendid president. I’ve enjoyed my four
years steadying “on even keel” (as Gilman
would say) with this flourishing society, and
I thank you for the opportunity to serve. I
especially want to thank the Society’s other
officers, past and present, who helped to
make this job so easy and so pleasant.
Finally, my thanks to all Society members
for their continued interest in Gilman’s
life and work.
Respectfully submitted,
Robin L. Cadwallader
Yours,
Cynthia J. Davis
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Conference News
There will also be a Gilman Society business
meeting at the ALA; check the online
conference program at the URL noted above
for the correct day and time.
Don’t miss the two Gilman Society
sponsored panels at this year’s American
Literature Association Conference, May
24-28, 2007, Boston, MA:
I. “Gilman’s ‘Other’ Fiction”: Thursday,
May 24, 2:30-3:50 p.m.
Gilman’s Visit to Skidmore
College
Chair: Robin L. Cadwallader, Saint Francis
University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Catherine J. Golden
Skidmore College
1. “Herland/Catland: Gilman’s Take on the
Feline-Canine Debate,” Catherine J. Golden,
Skidmore College
This past June 2006 at the University
of New England marked the 4th International
Charlotte Perkins Gilman Conference,
following upon three previous conferences at
the University of Liverpool in 1995, Skidmore
College in 1997, and the University of South
Carolina in 2001. Part of the excitement in
holding the Second International Gilman
Conference at Skidmore College is that
Skidmore, historically a woman’s college, was
one of the many academic institutions at which
Gilman lectured in the early twentieth century.
Recently, I came across a series of three
articles in the Saratogian (the local newspaper
still in existence) that shed light on this historic
visit.
Gilman’s coming to Skidmore College
in December of 1925 was a “noted” event. In
the Saratogian on December 5, 1925, the
following announcement appears: “Miss
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the noted author and
lecturer, will be a speaker at Skidmore College
Chapel next Wednesday evening. Saratogians
will be interested to know. She began her
public work lecturing on ethics, economics,
and sociology, and in writing for magazines
and papers on similar subjects” (p. 5, col. 4).
The inclusion of this notice in a column called
“Tea Table Chat” suggests that the newspaper
initially pitched this lecture to a female
audience; the other items in this society
column include recent travels of presumably
leading Saratogians, an “exceedingly attractive
bridge party” at the Katrina Trask House, and
the death of a prominent summer patron of
Saratoga Springs. A second Saratogian article
2. “The Bi-Sexual Race: Mediating
Masculine and Feminine Discourses in
Gilman’s Herland, With Her in Ourland, and
Beyond,” Jennifer A. Hudson, Southern
Connecticut State University
3. “(Re)Producing the Body Politic: Maternal
Gatekeepers, Eugenics, and Contagion in
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Crux,”
Stefanie Vischansky, University of Rochester
II. A Potpourri of Gilman's Short Fiction:
Day and time TBA (check the ALA
program at: http://www.calstatela.edu/
academic/english/ala2/)
Chair: Jennifer S. Tuttle, University of New
England
1. "Gilman's Limited Career Options for
Women in 'Aunt Mary's Pie Plant,'" Gamze
Sabanci, University of Liverpool
2. "Distracting and Detracting:
Heterosexuality and Social Productivity in
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Rocking
Chair,'" Patricia Tarantello, Fordham
University
3. "The Strangling Hold of Patriarchy in 'The
Giant Wistaria,'" Karyn M. Valerius, Hofstra
University
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dated December 8, 1925 recognizes Gilman’s
appeal to a wider audience by billing her as
“Economist to Speak,” presenting her
scholarly credentials (the article lists her
leading books, such as Women and
Economics), and calling her an internationally
recognized lecturer and writer on topics
including ethics, economics, sociology, and
feminism (p. 5, col. 5).
From this article, we learn Gilman’s
talk was entitled “Our Brains and What Ails
Them.” It took place not in the small College
chapel, but the larger venue of College Hall, at
8:00 PM. on December 9, 1925. Skidmore
apparently secured Gilman as a lecturer since
she was coming to Schenectady to be speaker
in an open forum at All Soul’s Church. Of
interest, too, is how this second article
emphasizes Gilman’s courageous feminism
from a post-suffrage vantage point: “In the
days when it took courage to do so, Miss
Gilman voiced the progressive point of view
on labor questions and feminism.” Gilman’s
visit to Skidmore occurred nine years after she
ended the Forerunner (1909-16) because she
recognized her readership was waning.
Times were changing. Post-World War I
audiences were put off by Gilman’s dual
allegiances to socialism and feminism. In
1922, she completed her final social treatise,
His Religion and Hers (1923), which
received mixed reviews. Gilman lamented
her fallen popularity and feared that society
had made poor progress in attaining the
widespread reforms she had envisioned for
women. She actively lectured and completed
several projects late in her career to ensure
her legacy would continue. No doubt eager
to reach her audience in the hope of creating
a more “human world,” Gilman was savvy in
choosing a topic for this Skidmore College
lecture that did not specifically address
feminism or the female brain, but the state of
education of the “human brain.”
Perhaps the most informative of the
three Saratogian articles is the review of her
lecture entitled “Not Pessimistic About the
Brain,” which appeared on the front page of
the Saratogian on Friday, December 10,
1925 (p. 1, col. 5), the day following her
lecture. The article bills Gilman as a “well
known sociologist and lecturer” and
summarizes the lecture, quoting many of her
lines. Gilman maintained in the talk that the
human brain is a social organ and that “The
capacity to think is social.” Whereas she
believed that religion required sacrifice of
“knowledge based on thought” for the sake
of “demanding belief,” she lamented that in
our present system of education, “We fill the
minds of our students full of disconnected
facts and neglect to develop in those students
the power to use their brains.” Her critique
of education recalls that of her beloved
author Charles Dickens, who approximately
three-quarters of a century earlier launched
Hard Times (1854) with didactic
schoolmaster Thomas Grandgrind’s assault
on the brain in order to make his own claim
for progressive education: “NOW, what I
want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls
nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in
life. Plant nothing else, and root out
everything else.”
Gilman turned not to fiction, but to a
lecture to offer her own call for progressive
education in twentieth-century America.
Although Gilman lamented that “We have
cried, ‘Stop! Stop!’ so often that we have
produced a generation immovable in the face
of the strongest appeals,” the reviewer
concludes that “Mrs. Gilman is not entirely
pessimistic about the human brain. If rightly
understood and developed she believes that it
will yet meet and solve the perplexing
problems confronting the human race.” Like
so much of Gilman’s writing, her message to
develop our brains remains timely in a
climate of increased testing in twenty-first
century education, motivated by the policy of
“No child left behind.” If we could
miraculously make Gilman a time traveler in
the twenty-first century, I predict her talk
entitled “Our Brains and What Ails Them”
would still pack an audience at Skidmore
College, whose motto is “Creative Thought
Matters.”
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Knight, Denise. “I could Paint Still
Life as well as any one on Earth”: Charlotte
Perkins Gilman and the World of Art.”
Women's Studies. July 2006: 475-492.
Gilman Society Donation in
Honor of Tillie Olsen
The Gilman Society regrets the passing of
renowned author and activist Tillie Lerner
Olsen on January 1, 2007, in San Francisco, a
few weeks before her 94th birthday. Tillie
was an enthusiastic longtime supporter of the
Gilman studies community, and those who
attended the 2001 International Gilman
Conference in Columbia, South Carolina had
the special opportunity to hear her give the
keynote address.
Gilman Society officers agreed that a
donation from our organization made in the
author’s memory would be a fitting tribute.
In late January 2007, a donation of $250 was
made to the Tillie Olsen Fund for Human
Rights, Public Libraries, and Working Class
Literature of the San Francisco Foundation,
an organization devoted to developing
communities, leadership, and philanthropies
in the author’s beloved city.
Knittel, Janna, “Environmental
History and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's
Herland.” Foundation: The International
Review of Science Fiction. Spring 2006: 4967.
Recent and Forthcoming
Publications on Gilman
____________________________________
St. Jean, Shawn, ed and introd., The
Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins
Gilman: A Dual-Text Critical Edition.
Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 2006.
Forthcoming Publications:
Edelstein, Sari, “Charlotte Perkins
Gilman and the Yellow Newspaper,” Legacy.
June 2007 (24.1).
Golden, Catherine, “Marking Her
Territory: Feline Behavior in 'The Yellow
Wall-Paper.'” American Literary Realism.
Fall 2007 (40.1).
Remember to check the
Gilman Society website for
conference news, calls for
papers, online resources, and
more!
Recent Publications:
Quawas, Rula, “A New Woman's
Journey into Insanity: Descent and Return in
‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’” AUMLA: Journal
of the Australasian Universities Language
and Literature Association. May 2006: 3553.
http://web.cortland.edu/gilm
an/
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The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Newsletter is published yearly each spring by the Gilman Society and
distributed to all dues-paying members. The newsletter welcomes short articles (500-800 words), book
reviews, reports on teaching Gilman, descriptions of archival items, calls for papers, and conference and
publication announcements. Starting in 2008, the newsletter will be published by the Vice President of
Publications; for information concerning future submissions, contact Sari Edelstein at [email protected].
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Membership in the Charlotte Perkins Gilman Society
The aim of the Charlotte Perkins Gilman Society is to encourage interest in Gilman and the issues that she
explored. Membership includes an annual issue of the Newsletter, notices of Gilman-sponsored sessions
at conferences, and an invitation to participate in the annual business meeting, which usually takes place
at the American Literature Association Conference. Dues are $5.00/year or $75.00 for lifetime
membership. Overseas members should contact Executive Director Robin Cadwallader regarding
membership fees and payment. To join, please fill out this form and send it with a check (in U.S. dollars)
made out to the Charlotte Perkins Gilman Society to this address: Robin Cadwallader, Department of
English, Saint Francis University, Loretto, PA 15940.
Name________________________________________________________________________________
Academic Affiliation (if any) _____________________________________________________________
Address
_______________________________________________________________________________
Current members: is this a new address? _______
Phone ______________________________ Email _________________________________________
I enclose
____ $5.00 for one year of membership
____ $75.00 for a lifetime membership
plus an additional contribution of $ ______________________.
Total amount enclosed: $ _________________________. Check one: ___ new member ___ renewal
Charlotte Perkins Gilman Society President Election Ballot
Election is for a two-year term; results will be announced at the Gilman Society business meeting at
the ALA conference. Please check the box to indicate your vote for the unopposed nominee:
_ Jennifer Tuttle
Jennifer has previously served the Gilman Society as Executive Director and Newsletter Editor. She is
the author and editor of several published and forthcoming works in Gilman studies, and she directed the
International Gilman Conference held in 2006. She teaches in the Department of English and serves as
the Faculty Director of the Maine Women Writers Collection at the University of New England in Maine.
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Please mail this form by 5/18 to:
In This Issue:
“Gilman’s Visit to Skidmore”
by
Catherine Golden
Publications and Conference Panel News
Ballot for Election of Society President
The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Society
Charlotte J. Rich, Newsletter Editor
Department of English and Theatre
467 Case Annex
Eastern Kentucky University
Richmond, KY 40475
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Charlotte Rich
2021 Ermine Ct.
Lexington, KY 40513