What Diantha Did was serialized in The Forerunner in 1909-10 and published as a book by Charlton Company in 1910. Diantha Bell is a young woman engaged to a man who cannot afford to marry her because he supports his mother and sisters. Rather than wait indefinitely, Diantha calculates the economic value of housework, demonstrates that amateur domestic labor is inefficient and costly, and starts a professional housekeeping business.
Her business succeeds: she provides better service at lower cost than individual housewives working alone. She expands into communal meals, professional laundry, and coordinated childcare. The community is transformed — women are freed from domestic drudgery, families save money, and the quality of domestic life improves. Diantha marries her fiancé from a position of economic independence rather than dependence.
The novel is Gilman’s most systematic demonstration of her economic theory: Women and Economics argued abstractly that domestic work should be professionalized; What Diantha Did shows concretely how this might work. The fiction is sometimes stiff (Gilman was a better essayist than novelist), but the economic argument remains compelling — and its vision of domestic labor as skilled professional work rather than unpaid female obligation anticipates debates that continue today.
Collecting What Diantha Did
First book edition (Charlton Company, New York, 1910): Cloth boards.
Market values:
- First edition, fine: $200–$500
- Very good: $80–$200