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Gilman, Charlotte Perkins (1860-1935)

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was the daughter of Mary Anne Westcott and Frederic Beecher Perkins, who was the eldest son of Mary Foote Beecher and Thomas Clap Perkins. Mary Foote Beecher (Gilman’s paternal grandmother) was perkins-image-small-courtesy-schlesinger-library-radcliffe-institute-harvard-925279-640.pngthe sister of Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, making them Charlotte’s great-aunts. She devoted her life to women's rights and comprehensive proposals for social reform, serving as a delegate to the International Socialist and Labor Congress in 1896. Throughout her work, Gilman proposes a centralized home that outsources much of the work that is currently considered “feminine” (cooking/cleaning), in order to make it more efficient, safer, and better for society’s health. When this work is done by professionals, women are free to pursue other careers, though Gilman is explicit in citing motherhood as the ideal to which all women should aspire.

The two utopian novels in her trilogy, Herland and Moving the Mountain, clearly depict veganism (Herland) and  vegetarianism (Moving the Mountain) as the ideal future towards which society should move. Animals have largely been removed from both societies: in the latter, dogs and cats are still kept in the countryside, while in Herland the women keep cats to control rodents that threaten the food supply. Slaughterhouses and livestock farms still exist in Moving the Mountain, where the animals are killed “more humanely.”  
                                                                                                                                                                               IMAGE: 3 July 1860. via Wikimedia, Public domain.

 

PUBLICATIONS

"The Automobile as a Reformer." Saturday Evening Post  Vol. 171 no. 49 (3 June 1899): 778.

“The Beast Prison.” The Forerunner  Vol. 3 no. 11 (Nov. 1912): 128-130.
 

"The Housekeeper and the Food Problem." Annals of the American Academy  Vol. 74 (Nov. 1917): 123-140.

Moving the Mountain. New York: Charlton Co., 1911.

"On Dogs." The Forerunner  Vol. 2 no. 7 (July 1911): 180-183.
 
"Pets and Children." The Independent  (13 August 1908): 65.
ProQuest, American Periodicals database. Subscription access.
 
"Prisons For Animals." Vegetarian and Fruitarian  Vol. 27 no. 6 (1 June 1928): 16.
ProQuest, American Periodicals database. Subscription access.
 
With Her in Ourland. The Forerunner  Vol. 7 no. 1-12 (1916).

 

Last updated on June 30th, 2025
SNSF project 100015_204481
How to cite this page:
Madsen, Deborah et al. 2025. "Gilman, Charlotte Perkins." Vegan Literary Studies: An American Textual History, 1776-1900. University of Geneva. <Date accessed.> <https://www.unige.ch/vls/bibliography/author-bibliography/gilman-charlotte-perkins-1860-1935>.