샬롯 퍼킨스 길먼

Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Woman Writer/Doctor Taking the Role of a Social Reformer

This paper aims to argue that an act of writing, for Charlotte Perkins Gilman, becomes a medium of political intervention into social reform as well as a kind of therapeutic process not only for healing herself but also for affecting the fate of other women of her time. It is well known that Dr. Mitchell who treated Gilman with 'rest cure' supposedly changed his treatment after reading "The Yellow-Wallpaper." This anecdote shows how Gilman's writing served as a kind of medical treatment of a woman doctor, which influenced other fellow doctors. By analyzing her short stories such as "The Yellow Wall-paper," "Dr. Clair's Place," "Old Water," "Making a Change," "Beewise," and "If I Were a Man," and a poem "To the Young Wife," this paper examines Gilman's attempt to rectify the typical images of feminine women and to provide alternative images of healthy women, and by extension, a healthy society. Proposing a new paradigm for health, Gilman as woman writer/doctor becomes an active social reformer who envisions a feminist utopia.