“Kansas women are awake” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s journeys in Kansas and the origins of women and economics
Billingham, Chase M.
Billingham, Chase M.
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2024-11-05
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Article
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Feminism,Great Plains history,History of social science,Literary history,Sociological theory,Suffrage
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Billingham, Chase M. ""Kansas Women Are Awake": Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Journeys in Kansas and the Origins of Women and Economics." Great Plains Quarterly, vol. 44 no. 1, 2024, p. 1-32. Project MUSE
Abstract
Writer, speaker, theorist, and activist Charlotte Perkins Gilman published her most influential work of nonfiction, Women and Economics, in 1898. This examination of family structure, gender inequality, and utopian social reforms influenced generations of sociologists, feminist scholars, and activists. However, Gilman, who suffered from chronic bouts of depression and exhaustion, struggled for months to begin work on the project, despite the fact that its contents drew heavily upon the lectures that she delivered from coast to coast during the mid-1890s. In 1897, during a month-long tour of the state of Kansas, Gilman finally found the inspiration to begin work on the book. In this article, I retrace Gilman’s travels throughout Kansas, examining the speeches that she delivered, her reactions to her Kansas audiences, and her impressions of the suffragists, women’s rights activists, and other individuals she encountered. Drawing upon diaries, letters, newspaper accounts, and other sources, I explore how Gilman’s work on behalf of the suffrage movement in Kansas advanced her professional career and academic reputation and contributed to the creation of this seminal text. © 2024 Center for Great Plains Studies. All rights reserved.
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Center for Great Plains Studies
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Great Plains Quarterly
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02757664