The Poetry of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born on the 3rd July 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut, to an unaffectionate mother and a father who abandoned her and her older brother to a life of poverty. Inevitably her schooling was limited and by 15 she had attended seven different schools but received only four years of education. However, Charlotte was resourceful and did spend time with her father’s aunts – the suffragist Isabella Beecher Hooker and the ‘Uncle Tom Cabin’s’ author, Harriet Beecher Stowe as well as many hours at the public library studying ancient civilizations. In 1878, she enrolled in classes at the Rhode Island School of Design where she met Martha Luther and they developed a close relationship until Luther married another woman in 1881. Charlotte was devastated and detested romance and love until she met and married the artist Charles Walter Stetson. Their only child, Katharine Beecher Stetson, was born in 1885 but left Charlotte with post-natal depression, then often dismissed as a