Charlotte Perkins Gilman Quotes

“Its time we woke up,” pursued Gerald, still inwardly urged to unfamiliar speech. “Women are pretty much people, seems to me. I know they dress like fools - but who’s to blame for that? We invent all those idiotic hats of theirs, and design their crazy fashions, and what’s more, if a woman is courageous enough to wear common-sense clothes - and shoes - which of us wants to dance with her?”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories

“Most men’s eyes, when you look at them critically, are not like that. They may look at you very expressively, but when you look at them, just as features, they are not very nice.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories

“I want to marry you, Malda - because I love you - because you are young and strong and beautiful - because you are wild and sweet and - fragrant, and - elusive, like the wild flowers you love. Because you are so truly an artist in your special way, seeing beauty and giving it to others. I love you because of all of this, because you are rational and highminded and capable of friendship - and in spite of your cooking!”
“But - how do you want to live?”

“As we did here - at first,” he said. “There was peace, exquisite silence. There was beauty - nothing but beauty. There were the clean wood odors and flowers and fragrances and sweet wild wind. And there was you - your fair self, always delicately dressed, with white firm fingers sure of touch in delicate true work. I loved you then.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories

“They say women have no conscience about laws, don't they?" Mrs. MacAvelly suggested.

"Why should we?" answered her friend. "We don't make 'em—nor God—nor nature. Why on earth should we respect a set of silly rules made by some men one day and changed by some more the next?"

(from According to Solomon)”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories

“Eternity is not something that begins after you are dead. It is going on all the time.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“Maleness means war.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“If a man loves a girl who is in the first place young and inexperienced; who in the second place is educated with a background of caveman tradition, a middle-ground of poetry and romance, and a foreground of unspoken hope and interest all centering upon the one Event; and who has, furthermore, absolutely no other hope or interest worthy of the name - why, it is a comparatively easy manner to sweep her off her feet with a dashing attack.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland

“And woman should stand beside man as the comrade of his soul, not the servant of his body.”
― Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“Lo que hace "El papel pintado amarillo" es dotar a la mujer loca de lápiz y papel y, en definitiva, de una voz propia.

"El papel pintado amarillo" es un grito, pero no tanto de desafío como de exigencia. La exigencia de ser escuchada, de ser comprendida, de ser reconocida. Lo único que podemos hacer es escuchar.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, The Yellow Wall-Paper