Vital Issues
Vital Issues
Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the Boston Woman’s Journal, 1904
Vital Issues presents an annotated scholarly edition of the weekly columns Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the most prominent American feminist intellectual during the early twentieth century, contributed in 1904 to the Boston Woman’s Journal, the leading journal of the US woman’s movement.
At the height of her career in 1904, Charlotte Perkins Gilman contributed dozens of essays to the Boston Woman’s Journal, “the only Voice of the Woman’s Movement in this country, if not the world,” as she later declared. Gilman aimed to transform “the whole woman movement” because she believed the right to vote was a necessary but insufficient goal. Her weekly column presumed that “the woman’s movement is larger than the suffrage movement and includes it; and that the very cause to which this paper is devoted will be most advanced by a more inclusive treatment.”
These essays silhouette the foundations of her feminism and anticipate much of her subsequent writing.
“Vital Issues is a meticulously edited collection of Gilman’s weekly columns published in the 1904 Women’s Journal. Scharnhorst has produced an enormously useful edition that will appeal to scholars, students, and casual readers alike.”—Denise D. Knight, author of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Study of the Short Fiction
“In this collection, we find the foundations of Gilman’s progressive agenda for kitchenless homes, professionalized housekeeping, and childcare centers alongside her stance on topics ranging from the myth of Santa Claus to cremation, maiden names, female teachers working after marriage, and the need for cleaner air and water. In Scharnhorst’s edition of Vital Issues, Gilman emerges as a woman of her time and our time.”—Catherine J. Golden, author of Serials to Graphic Novels: The Evolution of the Victorian Illustrated Book
Gary Scharnhorst is a Distinguished Professor emeritus of English at the University of New Mexico and the author or editor of over fifty books, including a three-volume biography of Mark Twain. He is the editor of the scholarly journal American Literary Realism.
Introduction
A Note on the Text
Column 1. January 2, 1904
Column 2. January 9, 1904
Column 3. January 16, 1904
Column 4. January 23, 1904
Column 5. January 30, 1904
Column 6. February 6, 1904
Column 7. February 13, 1904
Column 8. February 20, 1904
Column 9. February 27, 1904
Column 10. March 5, 1904
Column 11. March 12, 1904
Column 12. March 19, 1904
Column 13. March 26, 1904
Column 14. April 2, 1904
Column 15. April 9, 1904
Column 16. April 16, 1904
Column 17. April 23, 1904
Column 18. April 30, 1904
Column 19. May 7, 1904
Column 20. May 14, 1904
Column 21. May 21, 1904
Column 22. May 28, 1904
Column 23. June 4, 1904
Column 24. June 11, 1904
Column 25. June 18, 1904
Column 26. June 25, 1904
Column 27. July 2, 1904
Column 28. July 23, 1904
Column 29. July 30, 1904
Column 30. August 6, 1904
Column 31. August 13, 1904
Column 32. August 20, 1904
Column 33. August 27, 1904
Column 34. September 3, 1904
Column 35. September 10, 1904
Column 36. September 17, 1904
Column 37. September 24, 1904
Column 38. October 1, 1904
Column 39. October 8, 1904
Column 40. October 15, 1904
Column 41. October 22, 1904
Column 42. October 29, 1904
Column 43. November 5, 1904
Column 44. November 12, 1904
Column 45. November 19, 1904
Column 46. November 26, 1904
Column 47. December 3, 1904
Column 48. December 10, 1904
Column 49. December 17, 1904
Column 50. December 24, 1904
Column 51. December 31, 1904
Afterword
Notes
Index
