(1890 – 1920s) Emily Dickinson, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, & Kate Chopin Late 1880s – Early 1900s Emily Dickinson In the late 1800s women’s lives were ruled by two things: their husbands and their perceived place in society. However, during this time period the movement to give women equal rights, such as the right to vote, gained strength. The woman’s suffrage movement represented the growing force for women to have a voice in both politics and literature. 19th century upper and middle class women were completely dependent on their husbands and fathers. The man owned the woman, and therefore, the woman was under the control of the man. Their lives revolved around their role as respectable daughter, housewife, and mother. It was the woman’s role during this time period to make sure that the home was peaceful and organized when the husband came home from work. Their daily lives centered around cooking, sewing, knitting, weaving, milking the cows, and taking care of the children. Even girls had to learn how to take care of the household at an early age. In 1869, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Woman Suffrage Association. This movement demanded that the Fourteenth Amendment include a guarantee of the vote for women as well as for African- American males. Along with the right to vote, women’s organizations also worked for educational, economic, and political equality as well as social reforms. Up through the 1800s, education was not available to working class women. This started to change by the end of the nineteenth century. Some universities, such as Oxford University, began to accept a few wealthy women to study degree courses. However, women at that time were educated separately from men. Between 1880 and 1910, the number of women employed in the United States increased from 2.6 million to 7.8 million. Although women began to be employed in business and industry, the majority of better paying positions continued to go to men. At the turn of the century, 60 percent of all working women were employed as domestic servants. In the area of politics, women gained the right to control their earnings own property in the case of divorce, take custody of their children. By 1896, women had gained the right to vote in four states (Wyoming, Colorado, Idaho, and Utah). However, it was not until the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919 that women throughout the nation gained the right to vote. Women and women's organizations also worked on behalf of many social and reform issues. By the beginning of the new century, women's clubs in towns and cities across the nation were working to promote better schools the regulation of child labor women in unions liquor prohibition Poetry The late 1800s also saw the emergence of the poetry of Emily Dickinson. Although Dickinson lived from 1830 – 1886, most of her poetry was not published until after her death in 1890. Dickinson's poems are unique for the era in which she wrote. They contain short lines, typically lack titles, and often use slant rhyme as well as unconventional capitalization and punctuation. Emily Dickinson was born on December 10, 1830, in Amherst, Massachusetts. She spent her entire life in this small New England farming community. The center of her life was her family. She adored her father Edward, although he was stern and aloof. On the other hand, she criticized her mother, also named Emily. She and her mother did not have a strong connection. Therefore, she felt that she never had a mother at times. Dickinson’s father encouraged her education. She attended Amherst Academy and then enrolled at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley when she was 16. Dickinson stayed at Mount Holyoke for only one year before returning home. Although her formal education ended, she continued to educate herself. During her late teens or early 20s, she began to write poetry. While she was still a student, Dickinson experienced a religious crisis. Pressured to join a church, she wrestled with doubt. By her late 20s, she stopped attending church services. Many of her poems reflect the conflict she experienced between her own convictions and those that surrounded her. Some of Dickinson’s poems focus on the social constraints placed on women. Emily’s poems are inspired by intense sufferings of loss, loneliness, and death. Her work returns again and again to the human fear of mortality. This provides a stark emotional contrast to her quiet, private life. In the year 1862, Emily wrote 366 poems. Perhaps she was inspired by Reverend Charles Wadsworth. He was an older, married man whom Dickinson admired and reportedly loved. By the time Dickinson was in her 30s, she gradually withdrew from the world. Perhaps her solitude was a result of her unrequited love for Wadsworth. By the time she reached middle age, Dickinson rarely ventured beyond her house and garden. After living in seclusion for almost 20 years, she fell ill in 1884. She suffered from Bright’s disease, a gradual failure of the kidneys, and died on May 15, 1886. Dickinson had asked her brother Vinnie to burn all of her correspondence from family and friends upon her death. Fortunately, Vinnie rescued a box full of poems bound neatly into homemade booklets that Emily had stored. Of the 1,775 poems that Dickinson wrote, only seven had been published anonymously while she was alive. As a result of Vinnie’s persistence, the first volume of Dickinson’s poetry was published four years after her death. Love: Though she was lonely and isolated, Emily appears to have loved deeply. Nature: A fascination with nature consumed Emily. Faith And Doubt: Emily's theological orientation was Puritan. However, she disagreed with two common beliefs: infant damnation and God's sovereign election. There was another force alive in her time that competed for her interests: that was the force of literary transcendentalism. Remember that transcendentalists saw God through nature, not in a church. Pain And Suffering: Emily displays an obsession with pain and suffering. There is an eagerness in her poetry to examine pain, to measure it, to calculate it, to intellectualize it as fully as possible. In one poem Emily says "I like a look of Agony." Death: Many readers have been intrigued by Dickinson's ability to probe the fact of human death. She often adopts the pose of having already died before she writes her lyric. Charlotte Perkins Gilman & Kate Chopin Many women felt that they had little power, control, and independence over their lives during this time period. This feeling prompted many women to feel depression, anxiety, and stress. They struggled to cope with feeling oppressed under strict gender ideals and male dominance in society. Women were also believed to be more emotional, dependent, and gentle by nature. This led to the popular conclusion that they were more susceptible to disease and illness. This was a basis for the diagnosis of insanity in many female patients during the 19th century. Heredity, environment, gender, class, and 'sinful' behavior were commonly identified as causes of mental illness during this time period. Women did not want to be viewed as a bad and immoral. Honor and reputation could be maintained by the diagnosis of a medical condition such as insanity and commitment to an asylum. Physicians believed that they could cure patients if they could alter the physical environment by removing a patient from the city or by stopping a then unacceptable behavior or by surgically removing parts of the body or brain. Gilman became one of the most noted advocates for women. Gilman felt repressed in her own marriage. In 1885 she gave birth her only child and begins suffering from post-partum depression. She moved from the East Coast to California, where she wrote and spoke out on behalf of women’s rights and against male domination. Gilman used her writing to explore the role of women in America at the time. She explored issues such as the lack of a life outside the home and the oppressive forces of the patriarchal society. She wrote one of her most well- known pieces, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” in 1892. This short story is a psychological and suspenseful tale of isolation and insanity. It is based largely on Gilman’s own experience with the “rest cure.” Dr. S. Wier Mitchell
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
REST CURE Remain in bed for 6 weeks to 2 months No sitting up for the first 4-5 weeks No sewing, writing, reading, or the use of one’s hands other than to clean the teeth Bowels may be passed while lying down Patient may be lifted onto a lounge for an hour in the morning and again at bedtime and then lifted back into a newly made bed Gilman tells the story from the point of view of a nameless female protagonist. The woman undergoes the rest cure while staying in a rented house with her husband, who also happens to be a doctor. She is there with her baby (whom we never see) and her sister-in-law (who is a helper) She spends all her time in the bedroom (which once was a nursery) and writes (secretively) about her increasing fascination with the strange yellow wallpaper. She begins to see odd patterns in it; then to identify with it; and finally to enter into the “fantasy” world it generates. Gilman portrays the narrator's insanity as a way to protest the medical and professional oppression against women at the time. While under the impression that husbands and male doctors were acting with their best interests in mind, women were depicted as mentally weak and fragile. Gilman’s narrator feels frustrated that her husband and doctor are not listening to her thoughts and feelings. At the time women’s rights advocates believed that the outbreak of women being diagnosed as mentally ill was the manifestation of their setbacks regarding the roles they were allowed to play in a male- dominated society. Women were confined to the “domestic” functions of life while the men performed “active” work. For Gilman, the conventional nineteenth-century middle-class marriage ensured that women remained second-class citizens. “The Yellow Wallpaper” reveals that this gender division had the effect of keeping women in a childish state of ignorance and preventing their full development. Women were even discouraged from writing, because their writing would ultimately create an identity and become a form of defiance for them. Gilman realized that writing became one of the only forms of existence for women at a time where they had very few rights. Another female writer who focused on women’s issues and rights during this time period is Kate Chopin. Chopin’s fiction articulates the frustrations of generations of women who were confined to a sort of extended childhood by the men in their lives. Her gentle stories depicting some of the most obvious of women’s difficulties were extremely popular in the 1890s. Her short story “Story in An Hour” shows the oppression that a woman felt in her marriage. When she hears that her husband died in a train accident, she feels liberated that she is now free.