Charlotte Perkins Gilman and a Woman's Place in America

by Jill Bergman

  the burgeoning New Woman who was endeavoring to emerge from the co-

  coon of domesticity.12

  In fact, Stetson’s intensity as he tried to paint the portrait unnerved Gil-

  man. To Grace Channing, who later became Stetson’s sec ond wife, Gilman

  confided that she “hated to have [Walter] paint . . . her; she said ‘he looked at her as a stranger; something coldly impersonal came into his gaze.’ ” Channing sympathized with Gilman; she herself had witnessed Stetson’s detach-

  ment when he was engaged in painting portraits. He would “go off into remote

  and superior spaces and gaze at you . . . with an awful concentrated vision . . .

  [which] made [the subject] for the time a part of his creation.”13 The place

  that Stetson inhabited in order to render his creation—those “remote and su-

  perior spaces”—effectively reduced his subject to object. But Stetson could

  not master Gilman, either literally or figuratively. By this point in their relationship, she was rapidly constructing both an independent identity and a

  philosophy by which she would live her life; while she loved Stetson, she re-

  fused to be “created” by him or by anyone, even on canvas.

  Although we don’t know how many paintings of Gilman Stetson completed

  before and during their marriage, we do know that at least one other major

  portrait of her survives. It was begun in 1886, during Gilman’s breakdown, and completed in 1887. The recovery of this later portrait, purchased at an auction in 2008, is one of the most exciting developments in Gilman studies in recent years. Now in the private holdings of art collectors Christopher and Melinda

  Ratcliffe of Providence, Rhode Island, the portrait is a stunning oil on board depicting Gilman as she nurses daughter Katharine (see fig ure 2.3). The twelve-by- fifteen- inch painting was completed during the darkest period of Gilman’s life, just two months before she received treatment for neurasthenia from Dr.

  S. Weir Mitchell. In his notes about the painting, Stetson proudly remarked,

  “I believe this [portrait] to be among the very best of my pictures to date.”14

  Knight / 53

  Figure 2.3. Evening—Mother & Child,

  1886–1887, oil by Charles Walter Stetson

  And, in fact, we do see growth and evolution in his style compared to the studio portrait of Gilman that he completed nearly four and a half years earlier.

  Stetson began the portrait in 1886 from a sketch he had made of Charlotte

  and Katharine, and he completed it in February 1887. Titled Evening—Mother

  & Child, Stetson’s painting, like Ellen Day Hale’s, employs a contrast between light and darkness; half of Gilman’s face is illuminated, as is her breast and the collar and trim of her gown. Unlike the earlier rendering, this painting

  shows that Stetson was able, finally, to “say” her face and to “fix” it on the canvas. The expression Gilman wears suggests despondency and sorrow; her face

  is both literally and figuratively downcast. She loosely cradles her daughter’s head, which is also bathed in light. Her wedding ring is on her right hand

  rather than on her left; it is likely that weight loss during the months preceding her treatment for “exhaustion of the nerves” necessitated a switch from

  left to right, where the fit was more secure. In a document titled “Rec ords of My Daughter Katharine Stetson,” which, like the painting, was begun in August 1886, when her daughter was seventeen months old, Gilman wrote that

  Katharine “was nursed . . . under terrible nervous depression on my part, tears mingling with her milk.”15

  It is this tortured ritual—and Gilman’s realization that “instead of [feeling]

  love and happiness” she felt “only pain”—that Stetson depicts in this portrait.

  The awareness, Gilman said, that “motherhood brought no joy” was “utterly

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  bitter,” and the emotional pain was a form of “mental agony” that propelled

  her into a “nightmare gloom”—an enormously dark place from which she saw

  no escape.16 More than any other rendering, the painting serves as a visual

  companion to the written word; it is an arresting and authentic illustration of the emotional suffering that Gilman endured as she tried to conform to the

  socially prescribed expectations governing marriage and motherhood. And al-

  though Stetson had completed many other paintings by this time, he chose

  to display this portrait of his anguished wife at the Providence Art Club’s annual exhibition in May 1887; ironically, the exhibition, held at the very place Stetson and Gilman had met, coincided with Gilman’s treatment in Philadelphia by S. Weir Mitchell. Twelve days after she left Providence to undergo the rest cure, this very intimate portrait, depicting Gilman at her lowest point, was being scrutinized by friends and strangers alike, just a short walk from

  the home she shared with Walter Stetson.

  One of Stetson’s surviving sketchbooks contains a likely study for the paint-

  ing. Although some of the illustrations from the summer and fall of 1886 have been removed from the tablet, there is a simple pencil sketch titled “Bedtime Aug. 1886” (see fig ure 2.4). It depicts Gilman attired in the same robe, apparently, and in what appears to be the same chair as the one depicted in Stet-

  son’s sec ond painting. In the sketch Gilman’s eyes are closed, and her face reflects the “constant dragging weariness,” the “absolute misery” and the “helpless shame” that she describes in her memoir. One of the most intriguing features

  in the study is what appears to be a halo around Gilman’s head—a common

  convention in Christian iconography that signifies divine motherhood. In his

  diary, Stetson complained bitterly about Gilman’s desire to break free from

  the cult of domesticity. He wrote, “It is sin—surely sin—anything that takes

  woman away from the beautifying and sanctifying of home and the bearing

  of children must be sin. . . . She little knows what she does.” Clearly, Gilman could not assume the role of angel in the house as her husband demanded.

  The domestic sphere was simply not a place she felt at home. Shortly after her release from Mitchell’s care, Gilman began to lay the groundwork for a separation and eventual divorce.17

  Katharine Stetson fol owed in her father’s footsteps and also became an

  artist, who actively practiced her craft before the birth of her children. In her teens, she produced a series of early sketches of her mother, which were probably drawn sometime between 1898 and 1900 (see fig ure 2.5). Although the

  sketches do not reflect a high degree of artistic merit, they do offer a glimpse of Gilman, who relinquished custody of her daughter when she was nine, through

  Katharine’s eyes. What is noteworthy about the drawings—and allowing for

  the fact that these are early sketches—is that Katharine engaged in a careful observation of her mother and depicted her as vari ously drowsy, squinting,

  Figure 2.4. “Bedtime”—pencil sketch

  by Charles Walter Stetson, August 1886

  Figure 2.5. Pencil sketch by Katharine,

  ca.1898–1900

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  Figure 2.6. Pencil sketch by

  Katharine, 1904

  or frowning in each of the illustrations. Motherhood was not a role that Gil-

  man could gladly embrace. As she confided in a letter to Houghton Gilman,

  whom she would marry in 1900, “when [Katharine] was little [she was] . . .

  so lovely!—and I knew it, but couldn’t feel it! And it aches and aches.”18

  Two additional sketches from the fall of 1904, when Katharine was nine-

  teen, also survive. The first, rendered on Oc to ber 16, is again not a close likeness of
Gilman; Katharine struggled to capture her mother’s features, particularly her nose and lips. The sec ond rendering, drawn from a different angle

  than the first, again depicts a frowning fig ure, who appears to be cross and weary (see fig ure 2.6). Walter Stetson once wrote of Gilman, who was herself artistic, that she had produced a powerful painting of a “wan” and “worn out” fig ure who was facing an “insurmountable wall.” Stetson characterized

  the painting as a “literal transcript of her mind.”19 The same might be said of Katharine’s renderings of her mother; the two women had a thorny relationship that worsened when Katharine ultimately rejected her mother’s leanings

  toward pub lic service and instead, like her father, became an artist.

  Much to Gilman’s disappointment, Katharine also embraced the domestic

  sphere by becoming a housewife and mother, who painted and sculpted only as

  time allowed, even while acknowledging that female artists of ten subordinated their own work in order to attend to domestic chores. She wrote that “married women, unless wealthy[,] cannot devote themselves to art[,] as someone

  must care for the children and run the house.”20 While Gilman campaigned

  for socialized motherhood and professionalized housekeeping that would free

  Knight / 57

  Figure 2.7. Charcoal sketch by

  Katharine, ca.1906

  women to work outside the home, Katharine was willing to place tradition-

  ally feminine responsibilities ahead of her artistic ambitions.

  Before her marriage in 1918 to fellow artist F. Tolles Chamberlin, Katharine

  studied art for five years in Italy, where she lived with her father and Grace Channing; there she exhibited a series of drawings at the Ameri can Pavilion of the Roman International Exposition. She began exhibiting her work nationally when she was twenty- one.21 At some point, possibly as early as 1906, when she was a resident of the MacDowell Colony, a working retreat for artists in

  Peterborough, New Hampshire, Katharine produced two additional portraits

  of her mother. Although the origi nal renderings are lost, photographs of the works have survived, and they document the evolution in Katharine’s skills

  as an artist. It is difficult to define her style, but she was certainly influenced by her father’s portraiture from this period, which of ten depicted the subject in a “rigid pose and isolate[ed] . . . against a uniformly dark [back]ground”22

  One of the works (see fig ure 2.7) is a charcoal sketch with a background

  veiled in darkness, which provides a noticeable contrast to the illumination on Gilman’s face. For the first time, the subject, facing three- quarters to the right, stares back at the artist. The likeness in this drawing is more evolved than in Katharine’s earlier works, and although we don’t know what Gilman’s reaction was to the rendering, it is likely that she would have been pleased.23 Gilman is in full possession of the face that Charles Walter Stetson tried unsuccessful y to “fix.” There is a strength—a bold, defiant, unflinching, and steely gaze—a subtle suggestion of the strong will borne of Gilman’s New England

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  heritage, of which she was enormously proud.24 We also see more fidelity

  in the rendering of Gilman’s features than in earlier portraits: Katharine depicted the straightness of her mother’s nose, the frown lines that were starting to emerge, and the cleft in her chin.

  In contrast to the image of the stern New Englander, there are several newly

  recovered photographs of Gilman taken at Las Casitas Sanitarium in Cali-

  fornia in Janu ary 1900. (The photographer is unidentified.) More than any

  other rendering of Gilman, these photographs illustrate the impact of place

  on Gilman’s joie de vivre, on her outlook, and on her physical and mental

  health. Freed from the shackles of domesticity, Gilman appears ready, both

  literally and metaphorically, to climb mountains. Taken just two years after

  she had achieved international acclaim for her book Women and Economics

  (1898), these photographs are remarkable not only for their quality—they

  score fairly high on clarity—but also because, unlike most of the other im-

  ages, they are candid shots that depict a cheerful, radiant, and unguarded Gilman taking pleasure from the beauty of the idyllic setting in the foothills of the Sierra Madre.25 It was also in the Sierra Madre that Gilman chose to have her ashes scattered upon her death about thirty- five years later. The turn- of-the- century equivalent of today’s spa resorts, Las Casitas Sanitarium—or the

  “charming retreat,” as it was dubbed in Charles F. Lummis’s magazine, The Land of Sunshine— was touted as a place to which people who were “physically and mentally weary . . . [could] turn . . . for rest.”26

  Health- care professionals, in clud ing Dr. O. Shepard Barnum, who founded

  the sanitarium, believed that clean mountain air had the ability to heal both body and mind. Land of Sunshine contributor Elizabeth A. Graham remarked that in Las Casitas “one basks in the sunshine, drinks in the pure, bracing air, strolls through the canyons, roams over the trails, and life is one long summer dream.” Likewise, Grace Channing’s brother, Harold, a longtime acquaintance

  of Gilman’s, wrote in a tourists’ guide to South ern California that the remedial facility “offers to invalids a beautiful home, . . . picturesque walks . . .

  excellent cuisine[,] and skilled medical attendance.” Although Gilman stayed

  in the adjacent boardinghouse, she was photographed in front of the sanitar-

  ium’s main building, where she was accompanied in some of the images by

  two canine companions, a “big bull- dog [named] Jack” and “Tommy, a little

  Skye terrier.”27

  As Gilman noted in her autobiography, the winter that she spent at Las

  Casitas—where she drafted much of her 1904 book, Human Work—was among her happiest. She had her upcoming marriage to Houghton Gilman to look

  forward to in June, and she spent quality time with Katharine, who was liv-

  ing at the time with Walter and Grace in Pasadena. At Las Casitas, mother

  and daughter “tramped the hills together, read, played games—it was a joy,”

  Knight / 59

  Figure 2.8. Gilman in Las

  Casitas, California, 1900

  Gilman wrote in her memoir. The extant photographs capture her exuber-

  ance. Away from the pub lic eye, Gilman is relaxed and smiling, armed with

  a walking stick for climbing, a blanket for sitting, sturdy boots for hiking, and a tablet for writing. The mountains, broad and majestic, serve as a backdrop (see fig ure 2.8). To Houghton, Gilman waxed lyrical about the beauty

  and color of the landscape, describing the “flaming rose color [of the moun-

  tains] in the sunset light,” the “delicate brilliant green” of the meadows, the

  “sea of splendid color” in the valley, and the emergence at night of “the big liquid stars.” She was also proud of her physical prowess and routinely hiked six miles a day.28

  The written discourse describing her stay in Las Casitas is noteworthy: “You

  [should] see me prancing about these mountains. I’m not past being nimble

  yet—if I am [almost] forty! The folks here gaze at me in amazement,” Gilman bragged to Houghton. “This splendid air, the peace and stillness and beauty,

  are balm and strength to me.”29 Her language is striking: “prancing” is play-

  ful, and the “gaze [of] amazement” from onlookers contrasts sharply with

  the depiction of the anguished mother in Stetson’s rendering of Gilman thir-

  teen years earlier. The visitors at Las Casitas Sanitarium in Janu ary 1900 saw in Gilman a woman who was at the pinnacle of health and happiness. Unless

  they were familiar with her backgr
ound, they would not have seen what we

  see: a woman who teetered on the brink of insanity and found her way out.

  Of particular note is how Gilman described her heightened senses during

  her stay at Las Casitas—not only the visual but also the olfactory and audi-

  tory senses: “I am spending all day and every day out in the sweet high air

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  and blessed sun,” she wrote to Houghton, adding that “the fruit buds swell,

  almonds are long in flower. . . . The wood doves are calling to each other all up and down the shadowy wooded canyons.” At other points in her life—most

  notably during her breakdown years—she complained about hypersensitivity

  to sound, about having “wilted nerves” and “no ‘appetite’ in the mind,” when

  the effort “to see, to hear, to think” was like “wad[ing] in glue” and there was

  “an irritable unease[,] which finds no rest.”30

  Gilman’s experiences at Las Casitas, which she again visited in the spring

  of 1915, surely served as the foundation for her story “Dr. Clair’s Place” (emphasis added), which offered an alternative to S. Weir Mitchell’s rest cure by promoting the therapeutic benefits of a mountain resort. The story was published in the June 1915 issue of the Forerunner, and its title not only emphasizes the importance of physical space but also identifies the location of the fictional “psycho- sanatorium” as “the south ern face of the Sierra Madres.” The title also indicates that the female Dr. Clair has earned her “place” as a physician in what was then a traditionally male field; moreover, it suggests her psychological state: Dr. Clair is, as we would say today, in “a good place” emotionally. The name Clair, a fusion of the words clear and air, reflects the pristine environment that greeted new patients at the “sanatorium,” where they were

  urged to climb hills, go swimming, and sleep outdoors. Gilman’s own experi-

  ence at Las Casitas certainly informed the creation of her fictional counterpart, Octavia Welch, whose treatment for neurasthenia at Dr. Clair’s Place saves her from her “proposed suicide.” Also significant is that Gilman described the interior space at the sanitarium—when Welch arrives, she is placed in a “quiet