Charlotte Perkins Gilman: 1860-1935
| 1860 | Charlotte Perkins is born in Hartford, Connecticut to Fredrick Beecher Perkins, a librarian and magazine editor, and his wife, Mary Fitch Perkins. |
| 1860-69 | Fredrick Perkins leaves the family for prolonged periods of time. He sends Charlotte educational material to read. |
| 1869 | Fredrick Perkins divorces Mary Perkins. |
| 1884 | Charlotte marries Charles Walter Stetson (reluctantly). |
| 1885 | Charlotte gives birth to Katharine Beecher, after which she suffers from severe depression. She consults the noted neurologist S. Weir Mitchell, who prescribs his "rest cure" of complete bed rest and limited intellectual activity. |
| She takes a trip to California. | |
| 1888 | She leaves her husband, moving to Pasadena, California with her daughter and destitute mother. She begins writing poetry and short stories. |
| 1894 | She moves to San Francisco, where she edits feminist publications, assists in the planning of the California Women's Congresses of 1894-95, and helps to found the Women's Peace Party. |
| 1895 | Charlotte meets the social reformer Jane Addams, who invites her to spend several months at Hull House in Chicago, Illinois. Gilman then tours the United States and England lecturing on women's rights and on labor reform. |
| 1898 | She publishes Women in Economics, her best-known nonfiction work and "feminist manifesto." In the book Charlotte argues that women's secondary status in society, and especially their economic dependence on men, is not the result of biological inferiority but rather of culturally enforced behavior. |
| 1900 | Charlotte marries George Houghton Gilman, a first cousin who was seven years younger than she, and who is supportive of her intense involvement in social reform. She writes "Concerning Children." |
| 1904 | She writes "Human Work." |
| 1909-1916 | Charlotte publishes a monthly journal, The Forerunner, for which she writes nearly all of the copy that she claimed could fill 28 long books. |
| 1911 | She writes Moving and Mountain. She also writes "Man-Mad World," an essay that was part of her assertion that women should work outside of the home. |
| 1915 | Charlotte writes Herland. |
| 1916 | She writes utopian novel: With Her in Ourland. |
| 1935 | Charlotte learns that she had inoperable cancer. She takes her life on August 17, 1935, in Pasadena, California, at the age of 75. |
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