The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography was published by D. Appleton-Century in 1935, the year of Gilman’s death. She wrote it knowing she would die — diagnosed with inoperable breast cancer in 1932, she chose chloroform over a slow decline, dying on August 17, 1935. Her suicide note read: “I have preferred chloroform to cancer.”
The autobiography covers her extraordinary life with characteristic directness: her unhappy first marriage to Charles Stetson (the breakdown that produced “The Yellow Wallpaper”), her decision to give custody of her daughter to her ex-husband and his new wife (scandalous in the 1890s but, Gilman argued, better for the child), her intellectual development through reading and lecturing, her second marriage to Houghton Gilman (happy and equal), and her career as writer, lecturer, and feminist theorist.
The book is remarkably unsentimental about both her sufferings and her achievements. Gilman writes about her nervous breakdown with clinical precision, about her intellectual development with matter-of-fact pride, and about her approaching death with the same logic she applied to every other problem. The autobiography is essential for understanding “The Yellow Wallpaper” — it provides the biographical context that transforms the story from gothic tale to political weapon.
Collecting The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman
First edition (D. Appleton-Century, New York, 1935): Cloth boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition with jacket, fine/fine: $300–$800
- Without jacket, very good: $100–$250