Rhode Island Council for the Humanities

I Should Have Been an Acrobat: Charlotte Perkins Gilman in Flight from Depression

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a feminist author, lecturer, and founder of the Providence Ladies' Gymnasium. In her 1892 semi-autobiographical story, The Yellow Wallpaper, she explored the links between mental illness and the isolation of domestic life: a wife, confined to her bed, sinks deep into depression as she stares at the pattern on the walls and loses touch with the world beyond them. Gilman believed that exercise was essential to mental health, and used calisthenics as a means of warding off her own bouts of depression. This slide presentation offers an overview of her life and work, and considers her advocacy of women's fitness in the context of her larger feminist agenda.

Jane Lancaster is an award-winning teacher, researcher, and writer. She received a PhD from Brown University, writing a dissertation on the life of engineer Lillian Moller Gilbreth (the mother of twelve celebrated in Cheaper by the Dozen). Her work on Rhode Island women has been published in periodicals ranging from the Providence Journal to the Journal of American History.

Availability: is sometimes away during the summer months Needs: slide projector and screen; lighted lectern/water

Needs: slide projector and screen; lighted lectern/water