by Jill Bergman
ers for a day, and then it allows those readers to magically join a like- minded community. She ascribes to journalism the capacity to unite women in what
Nancy Fraser has called a “counterpub lic sphere,” a space “where members of
subordinated groups invent and circulate counter- discourses to formulate op-
positional interpretations of their interests and needs.”35 Thus the Forerunner is the vehicle that can achieve what the witch cannot: an effective, enduring route to awakening women to their intellectual abilities and po liti cal potential.
Periodicals and newspapers exert an almost supernatural power to shape
individuals and societies. With her Forerunner fiction, Gilman exploited that power, uncoupling women from kitchens and motherhood and instead locating them in business and nature, urban planning and medicine. While the
male- dominated, “salacious” newspapers failed to fulfill their pub lic duty and inundated women with messages about marriage, motherhood, and consumerism, the Forerunner enabled female readers to, as Gilman put it, “see their duty as human beings, and come right out into full life and work and happiness,” the very hope of the witch in the story. These stories offer readers a new set of coordinates and directions for modern life, celebrating rather than denigrating women’s failure to stay in their proper places. Just like the witch, Gilman offered her readers a purified periodical as a map to guide them away
from the sensational and prescriptive and toward the “true and necessary.”
NOTES
1. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Are Love Affairs News?” Forerunner, November–
De cem ber 1915: 301, 336.
2. Sari Edelstein, “Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Yellow Newspaper,”
Legacy 24, no. 1 (2007): 72–92.
3. Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Feminist Engagements: Forays into Ameri can Literature and Culture (New York: Macmillan, 2009), 34.
4. Aleta Cane, “The Heroine of Her Own Story: Subversion of Traditional
Periodical Marriage Tropes in the Short Fiction of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Forerunner,” in “The Only Efficient Instrument”: Ameri can Women Writers and the Periodical, 1837–1916, ed. Susan Alves and Aleta Cane (Boston: Northeast ern University Press, 2001), 97.
Edelstein / 143
5. Tim Cresswell, Place: A Short Introduction (Oxford, UK: Wiley- Blackwell, 2004), 2.
6. “Gilman repeatedly advocated reforms such as children’s day- care and kitchenless houses to release women from domestic duties and to allow them to pursue the professions for which they were most suited.” Charlotte J. Rich, ed., “Introduction,” in What Diantha Did, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1910; repr., Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005), 6.
7. Tim Cresswell, “Weeds, Plagues, and Bodily Secretions: A Geographical
Interpretation of Metaphors of Displacement,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 87, no. 2 (1997): 334.
8. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Our Place Today,” in Charlotte Perkins Gil-
man: A Non- Fiction Reader, ed. Larry Ceplair (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 59–60.
9. See, e.g., Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Unnatural Mother,” Forerunner, No vem ber 1916. Gilman undermined the assumption that a woman’s first priority must be her family; instead, she described a woman who puts her community
before her own children, saving numerous lives rather than focusing only on her own loved ones.
10. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Dr. Clair’s Place,” Forerunner, June 1915, 141–45.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Their House,” Forerunner, De cem ber 1912.
14. Ibid., 312, 313.
15. Ibid., 309.
16. Cane, “Heroine,” 112.
17. Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 3, 14.
18. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Newspapers and Democracy,” Forerunner, Novem ber 1916, 301.
19. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “When I Was a Witch,” Forerunner, May 1910, 1.
20. Ibid., 1, 2. One observer has noted, “Gilman’s advocacy of euthanasia . . .
placed her at the forefront of the humane movement.” Catherine Golden, “Mark-
ing Her Territory: Feline Behavior in ‘The Yellow Wall- Paper,’ ” Ameri can Literary Realism 40, no. 1 (2007): 16.
21. Gilman, “Witch,” 3, 4.
22. Carol Margaret Davison, “Haunted House/Haunted Heroine: Female
Gothic Closets in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ ” Women’s Studies 33 (2004): 48.
23. Janet Beer and Avril Horner, “ ‘This Isn’t Exactly a Ghost Story’: Edith Wharton and Parodic Gothic,” Journal of Ameri can Studies 37, no. 2 (August 2003): 270.
24. Marion Gibson, “Retelling Salem Stories: Gender Politics and Witches in
Ameri can Culture,” European Journal of Ameri can Culture 25, no. 2 (2006): 90.
144 / Chapter 6
25. Linda McDowell, Gender, Identity, and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 149.
26. Michael Davitt Bell, The Problem of Ameri can Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 30.
27. Gilman, “Witch,” 5–6.
28. Ibid., 6.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Gilman, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 121.
33. Gilman, “Witch,” 6.
34. Gilman, “As to Purpose,” Forerunner, No vem ber 1909, n.d.
35. Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Cri-
tique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text 25/26 (1990): 67.
WORKS CITED
Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006.
Beer, Janet, and Avril Horner. “ ‘This Isn’t Exactly a Ghost Story’: Edith Wharton and Parodic Gothic.” Journal of Ameri can Studies 37, no. 2 (August 2003): 269–85.
Bell, Michael Davitt. The Problem of Ameri can Realism: Studies in the Cultural History of a Literary Idea. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Cane, Aleta. “The Heroine of Her Own Story: Subversion of Traditional Periodical Marriage Tropes in the Short Fiction of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Forerunner.” In “The Only Efficient Instrument”: Ameri can Women Writers and the Periodical, 1837–916, edited by Susan Alves and Aleta Cane, 85–112. Boston: North east ern University Press, 2001.
Cresswell, Tim. Place: A Short Introduction. Oxford, UK: Wiley- Blackwell, 2004.
———. “Weeds, Plagues, and Bodily Secretions: A Geographical Interpretation
of Metaphors of Displacement.” Annals of the Association of Ameri can Geographers 87, no. 2 (1997): 330–45.
Davison, Carol Margaret. “Haunted House/Haunted Heroine: Female Gothic
Closets in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper.’ ” Women’s Studies 33 (2004): 47–75.
Edelstein, Sari. “Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Yellow Newspaper.” Legacy 24, no. 1 (2007): 72–92.
Fishkin, Shelley Fisher. Feminist Engagements: Forays into Ameri can Literature and Culture. New York: Macmillan, 2009.
Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Social Text 25/26 (1990): 56–80.
Edelstein / 145
Gibson, Marion. “Retelling Salem Stories: Gender Politics and Witches in American Culture.” European Journal of Ameri can Culture 25, no. 2 (2006): 85–107.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “Are Love Affairs News?” Forerunner, No vem ber–
De cem ber 1915.
———. “Dr. Clair’s Place,” Forerunner, June 1915.
———. The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. New York: Appleton- Century, 1935.
———. “Newspa
pers and Democracy.” Forerunner, No vem ber 1916.
———. “Our Place Today.” In Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Non- Fiction Reader, edited by Larry Ceplair, 53–61. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991.
———. “Their House.” Forerunner, De cem ber 1912.
———. “The Unnatural Mother.” Forerunner, No vem ber 1916.
———. “When I Was a Witch.” Forerunner, May 1910.
Golden, Catherine. “Marking Her Territory: Feline Behavior in ‘The Yellow WallPaper.’ ” Ameri can Literary Realism 40, no. 1 (2007): 16.
McDowell, Linda. Gender, Identity, and Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
Rich, Charlotte J., ed. “Introduction.” In What Diantha Did, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1910, 1–23. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005.
7
The Power of the Postal Service
in Gilman’s “Turned”
Exposing Adultery and Empowering Women
to Find a Meaningful Place
Catherine J. Golden
Except for the infamous yellow wallpaper, material artifacts have rarely been the focus of Gilman scholarship. To develop plot and characterization, Charlotte
Perkins Gilman incorporated many revealing material objects in her fiction, includ ing newspapers in “When I Was a Witch” (1910), furniture in “The Rock-
ing Chair” (1893) and “The Chair of English” (1913), and letters in “Turned”
(1911); the latter are the focus of this analy sis. In her short story “Turned,” published in the Forerunner, Gilman used letters to infiltrate domestic space, inviting critics to read the story from the lens of place (a concept from human geography). Tim Cresswell defines place as “a meaningful location” as well as
“a way of understanding the world.”1 Incorporating postal history, material
culture studies, triangular desire, and the spatial concept of place, this chapter illuminates how the mail, in exposing adultery, empowers two women—
an educated white female and her untutored foreign domestic—who together
find a meaningful place in a gendered world.
Our age relies on e- mails, texts, and tweets, the hallmarks of computer-
mediated communication. We still depend on the post office for aspects of
our daily living; Gilman’s “Turned,” however, returns readers to a time when
people communicated primarily by letter. In the early twentieth century, tele-grams and telephones were available but expensive. Sending a letter was the
most affordable way to communicate with professional associates, friends, and loved ones who lived at a distance and to stay in touch with family members and friends while traveling for business or pleasure. Gilman herself was an avid letter writer.2 She understood that an address in a familiar handwrit-
Golden / 147
ing or typeface, as in “Turned,” spoke to the receiver before she or he even
opened the envelope.
Letters are common plot devices in nineteenth- century fiction and narrative
painting. Letters declare undying love; think only of Captain Wentworth’s missive to Anne Elliot at the close of Jane Austen’s Persuasion (1818): “You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever.”3 Letters announce the death of a relative and the receipt of an inheritance as well as unending love. In Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), for example, Jane receives a letter informing her of the death of her uncle, who leaves her a fortune of 20,000 pounds.
Letters also serve a range of functions in works by two Victorian au thors
that Gilman admired: George Eliot and Charles Dickens.4 Letter writing
be comes a vehicle for Reverend Edward Casaubon to propose marriage to
Dorothea Brooke in Middlemarch (1872); in turn, Dorothea accepts his offer in a letter. Dickens uses letter writing and handwriting daringly through out Bleak House (1853), such as to enlighten Lady Dedlock that her former lover (and father of her illegitimate daughter) is still alive (she recognizes his distinctive handwriting on legal documents) and later to fuel slander when Lady
Dedlock’s French maid, Mademoiselle Hortense, posts dozens of anonymous
letters blaming Lady Dedlock for a murder that Hortense herself has commit-
ted. In Eliot’s fiction a letter thus grants its receiver a significant place, whereas in Dickens’s fiction it aims to displace.
In Victorian narrative painting, letters infiltrate the home to reveal a wom-
an’s clandestine past and punish her. Augustus Egg plants such a letter to inform a distraught husband of his wife’s betrayal in his triptych of marital infidelity entitled Past and Present (1858). In the first of three panels (see fig ure 7.1), the cuckolded husband sits at the dining room table in shock, holding
the letter that informs him of his wife’s indiscretion. The erring wife—who
has been peeling an apple, a symbol of temptation—lies prostrate at her hus-
band’s feet, begging forgiveness. The couple’s daughters, at the left side of the picture, are building a house of playing cards, symbolizing the fragility of their family. The house of cards balances precariously on top of a book with the
name honoré de balzac blazed on its spine; Egg thus associates the wife’s
adultery with racy French novels with infidelity plots like Balzac’s own Cousin Bette (1846) and Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1856).
The sec ond and third panels of Past and Present show the effects of the wife’s infidelity on her two children, her husband, her bastard child, and herself. In the sec ond canvas the couple’s daughters are staring at the moon, and in the third panel the outcast wife gazes upon this very same moon from her
precarious berth by the polluted Thames where she nurses her dying illegiti-
148 / Chapter 7
Figure 7.1. Augustus Leopold Egg, Past and Present, No. 1, 1858, ©Tate, Lon don, 2015
mate child. Egg appended a fictional diary quotation to the triptych when
he exhibited the painting at the Royal Academy in 1858; it reads in part: “so his poor children have now lost both parents.” From this note, which intensifies the painting’s function as a morality tale, we know that the betrayed
husband is now dead—presumably of a broken heart—and the fallen wife is
treated as one dead.5
Egg was not the only painter to employ the device of an incriminating let-
ter in a painting that resembles a cautionary tale. Richard Redgrave uses a letter in his depiction of an unwed young woman’s fall in The Outcast (1851) (see fig ure 7.2). In this painting the situation is clear without the letter, leading George Landow to conclude, “The device of an incriminating letter, which
Augustus Egg employed in Past and Present (I), seems a bit unnecessary here since the daughter holds her illegitimate child in her arms—clear enough evidence that she’s a fallen woman!”6 Might the inclusion of the letter that conveys the daughter’s sad history underscore the righteousness of the father’s
wrath? The viewer has no doubt why the father is so determined to punish
his fallen daughter, despite her pleading and that of another daughter who
kneels at his back and begs him to repent. At the left of the picture, a con-
Golden / 149
Figure 7.2. Richard Redgrave, The Outcast, 1851, courtesy of the Royal Academy of Arts, Lon don
cerned mother comforts her son, who buries his head in his arms in grief, as
well as a younger daughter. However, the focus of the painting is the right
side of the picture, where the daughter stands apart from her family. An open letter lies on the floor. The angry patriarch glares at his fallen daughter, positioned at the threshold of the open doorway in the dark of night. The fallen
woman swaddles her c
hild with her shawl and looks beseechingly at her stern
father, but the aged patriarch is unyielding. He points his finger to go, banishing his outcast daughter and her child to the cold, dark, snowy outdoors.
Aspects of these narrative paintings of fallen women surface with a twist in
“Turned,” in which Gilman used letters for a feminist purpose. Gilman engi-
neered an epistolary mix- up to reveal not a wife’s adultery, but a husband’s. At the turn of the twentieth century, adultery was “a subject genteel folk avoided talking about, except to denounce the women who engaged in it,” Ann Lane
notes.7 The epistolary mix- up introduces adultery in a “genteel” way, opening Marion’s eyes to her husband’s affair with their Swedish live- in domestic, Gerta Petersen. The lens of place as Cresswell’s “way of understanding” illuminates how Marion arguably finds her home threatened by the attachment her husband has formed with their now- pregnant servant as well as her initial exclu-sionary reaction to banish pregnant Gerta from the Marroners’ home, which
150 / Chapter 7
would render the servant placeless. Ultimately, however, mixed- up letters—
objects of material culture that entered the home on a daily basis—disrupt the dynamics of the time- honored romantic triangle to expose and denounce an
adulterous husband. His two love interests transform from passive objects of
desire to active characters who leave home, find a new place, and gain strong identities apart from him.
To recap the plot of “Turned”: Gilman centers her story on “two women
and a man. One woman was a wife: loving, trusting, affectionate. One was