Three Thanksgivings Essay | Critical Essay #1

Three Thanksgivings Critical Essay #1

Poquette has a bachelor's degree in English and specializes in writing about literature. In the following essay, Poquette explores Gilman's use of characterization to underscore her feminist message in "Three Thanksgivings."

It is no surprise that Gilman's works resurfaced in the 1960s and 1970s when the women's movement began. As Barbara H. Solomon notes in her 1992 introduction to Herland and Selected Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "a burgeoning interest in feminist issues led historians, social critics, teachers, and students to search for the best sources about the conditions of women. And their search inevitably led to Charlotte Perkins Gilman." The majority of Gilman's works, both fiction and nonfiction, address women's issues in some way. For example, although she claimed in her autobiography that the real purpose of her novella, The Yellow Wallpaper, "was to reach Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and convince him of the error of his ways"—as...
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