GILMAN, Charlotte Perkins.

£2,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Women and Economics. First edition, first printing, of "the most brilliant and original contribution to the woman question since John Stuart Mill's essays on The Subjection of Women" (Bederman, p. 122). This argument for economic equality between the sexes, which develops the "sexuo-economic" paradigm that is so essential to Gilman's work, secured her international reputation and has remained essential to the subsequent development of feminist thought and philosophy.Still considered one of the most important feminist thinkers in the United States, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) asserted that women's economic dependence on men was a core evil that prevented all members of society from reaching their true potential, and that women's political and financial independence was an asset, improving conditions for all members of the family. "So persuasive did her readers find her calls for progressive changes in sexual relations that Charlotte was hailed as the brains of the woman's movement... Most remarkable of all from a biographical standpoint is Charlotte's daring proposal of an economic solution to women's existential and marital problems" (Davis, p. 202). Reviewers described it as "the book of the age", Florence Kelley as "the first real, substantial contribution made by a woman to the science of economics", and Jane Addams as a "masterpiece" (quoted in Bederman, p. 122).

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