Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Essay Date 1898)

SOURCE: Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "Women and Economics." In The American Reader: Words That Moved a Nation, edited by Diane Ravitch, pp. 205-06. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990.

In the following excerpt from her 1898 book Women and Economics, Gilman discusses the cost of the restrictions placed upon women in America—to individuals and to society as a whole.

What we do modifies us more than what is done to us. The freedom of expression has been more restricted in women than the freedom of impression, if that be possible. Something of the world she lived in she has seen from her barred windows. Some air has come through the purdah's folds, some knowledge has filtered to her eager ears from the talk of men. Desdemona learned somewhat of Othello. Had she known more, she might have lived longer. But in the ever-growing human...