Seven charming tales explore relations between the sexes and offer witty insights from a feminist perspective. Includes the 1892 title classic, plus "Cottagette," "Turned," "Mr. Peebles' Heart," and more. Best known for the 1892 title story of this collection, a harrowing tale of a woman's descent into madness, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote more than 200 other short stories. Seven of her finest are reprinted here. Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "Turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a naïve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories. These charming tales are not only highly readable and full of humor and invention, but also offer ample food for thought about the social, economic, and personal relationship of men and women - and how they might be improved.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) was the author of novels, short sto ries, poems, and works of nonfiction. She is best known for The Yellow Wall-Paper (1892), Women and Economics (1898), and the novel Herland (1 915). Her novel The Crux (1910) is also published by Duke University Press. Charlotte J. Rich is Associate Professor of English at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky. She is editor of The Charlotte Perkins Gilman Newsletter.