Women and Economics.
“We Are The Only Animal Species
In Which The Female Depends On The Male For Food,
The Only Animal Species In Which The Sex-Relation Is Also An Economic Relation.”
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Stetson. Women and Economics. A Study of the Economic Relation Between Men and Women as a Factor in Social Evolution. Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1898.
8vo.; brick red cloth; spine label; a sparkling copy. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition of Gilman’s first work of non-fiction. The publication of Women and Economics, a provocative social-Darwinist critique of Western finance and gender arrangements, heralded a major life change for its 38-year-old author, who was then recovering from severe post-partum depression and from the dissolution of her first marriage to painter Charles Stetson. Ironically—or, perhaps, appropriately—the commercial success of Women and Economics gave Gilman both the financial independence and the confidence to continue her fledgling career.
Gilman’s father abandoned the family shortly after her birth, impoverishing Charlotte’s mother. Perkins’s austere youth imbued in her a sense of the vital need for economic stability for women, a sense that would animate many of her writings.
In Women and Economics, Gilman argued forcefully against gender-determined economic roles in society. HAWH notes that it was
...the book that established her as a giant in the women’s movement... In it, Gilman concluded that women must challenge the contemporary social norms of sex and domesticity to achieve equality and independence...only through economic independence could women become self-sufficient, autonomous individuals...She quickly became an internationally recognized speaker and author who worked actively to improve labor conditions and society in general. (p. 232)
A lovely copy of a landmark feminist tract. Copies of Women and Economics in fine condition are particularly uncommon.
(#4658)
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