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Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Home is a scathing attack on the domesticity of women in the early 20th century. Her central argument, that "the economic independence and specialization of women is essential to the improvement of marriage, motherhood, domestic industry, and racial improvement" resonates in this work. Throughout, she maintains that the liberation of women—and of children and of men, for that matter—requires getting women out of the house, both practically and ideologically. AltaMira Press is proud to reprint this provocative work and introduce Charlotte Perkins Gilman to a new generation of students and feminist scholars.

Reprint of 1903 edition of Gilman's classic indictment of domestic life, offering a program of domestic reform that inspired women at the beginning of what became a century-long struggle.

Booknews

Six decades before Betty Friedan's groundbreaking work, well-known American writer Gilman (1860-1935), arguably more famous for her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," wrote that a woman's arbitrary confinement in the home makes her less of a person, and that a mental myopia comes over her as she focuses only on the proximate to the exclusion of the visionary. The 1903 edition, published by McClure, Phillips, is reproduced from the original pages. It contains neither index nor bibliography. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prolific American writer and feminist theorist who wrote over two hundred short stories, including 'The Yellow Wallpaper' (1892), a stark account of a young mother's mental breakdown. Michael S. Kimmel is Professor of Sociology at State University of New York, Stony Brook.