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Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Life dates: 1860 AD — 1935 AD

Personal byline in the 1911 Optimist anthology. Basic source-backed attribution identity; lifetime and independent authorship verification not established here.

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Quotations and sayings

02c. 1897 AD
Brother—there is no payment in the world! We work and pour our labor at the feet Of those who are around us and to come. We live and take our living at the hands Of those who are around us and have been. No one is paid. No person can have more Than he can hold. And none can do beyond The power that's in him. To each child that's born Belongs as much of all our human good As he can take and use to make him strong. And from each man, debtor to all the world, Is due the fullest fruit of all his powers, His whole life's labor, proudly rendered up, Not as return—can moments pay an age? But as the simple duty of a man. Can he do less—receiving everything?
Charlotte Perkins Gilman / quote
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08c. 1897 AD
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 / quote
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18c. 1897 AD
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 / quote
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