Summary Of Catharine Beecher And Charlotte Perkins Gilm Architects Of Female Power

In the article “Catharine Beecher and Charlotte Perking Gilman: Architects of female power,” written by Valerie Gill, the author reviews the writing and ideological beliefs about two feminist, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Catharine Beecher. In the introduction, Gill states, “When we first compare the writing of Charlotte Perkins Gilman with those of her great-aunt, Catharine Beecher, we are likely to conclude that the two could not have had more disparate notions about the kind of lives American women should lead” (pg.17). She then goes on to compare and contrast their different views, based mostly on their fundamental beliefs about how the home is the base of the women’s role in our society. Throughout the article, Gill shows how their basic

principles are the same, however, their beliefs on women’s roles in our society are much different. Notably, the Author uses many sources throughout the article, such as, the writing of Gilman in the book “Women and Economics” and “Moving the Mountain” to back her writing. Likewise, she cites many sources of Beecher, for example, her writing in “American Woman’s Home” and “A Treatise on Domestic Economy.”

As described above, Gill’s primary purpose for writing the article was to analyze the differences between Beecher and Gilman’s ideological beliefs on women’s roles in our society.

With regards to the strengths, Gill has many in this article. For example, to demonstrate the differences between Beecher and Gilman, she starts the article off by giving the basic foundation of Beecher’s beliefs. Gill explains that Beecher believed that men and women belong in two separate spheres, “the men’s sphere being the public realm of commerce and politics, and the women’s the contained environment of the home” (pg.17). Comparatively, Gill shares Gilman’s views and the stark contrast between them. To emphasize, Gill writes that Gilman spent a considerable amount of her energy trying to reverse her great-aunts domestic ideology views (pg.17). To emphasize, Gill states that unlike her great-aunt, “Gilman seeks to blur the distinction between private and public life.” In Gilman’s novel “Moving the Mountain,” she describes a community that has a centralized common area for eating and other household service, in which would allow women to be freed up to pursue other ventures (pg.18). In contrast, Gill explains that Beecher initial interest in to architecture was not for personal use, but instead, her efforts to establish “quasi-public” institution for Hartford. Gill goes on to explain Beecher’s Christian based home, in which, “the layout of a Christian house’s ground floor maps the success or failure with which he mistress balances the bourgeois pretension to gentility and the need for efficiency” (pg. 18). Different from Beecher’s views, Gill goes on to show that Gilman sought to establish a community that would “free women to become wage-earning citizens.” Gill does a good job showing the opposing views of Beecher and Gilman, and their foundational beliefs of what role a women should play in our

society.

Although there were many strengths in this article, I did however, find some weakness. Gil starts her article by saying “the two could not have had more disparate notions” regarding Gilman and Beecher’s views on women’s role in our society (pg. 17). This is echoed throughout the rest of the article as Gil gives many examples to show their differences on the topic. For instance, “Gilman and Beecher, then, both work through the gender roles of their society… For Beecher, the apportionment of “out-door labor” to men and domestic to labor to women serves as the foundations… Gilman, meanwhile, questions the distribution of labor between the sexes by repositioning the public/private dichotomy in civic design” (pg. 21). Throughout the article I was able to understand Gil’s point-of-view; however, after reading the entirety of the article I was left confused on some of her strong claims about truly different the two were.