18.3a Charlotte Gilman & Simone de Beauvoir Flashcards
Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1860-1935
Gilman was an American first-wave liberal thinker, though often labelled as a socialist feminist in the USA.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Key Ideas
Sex and domestic economics are hand in hand – for women to survive, they have to depend on their sexuality and body in order to please their husbands.
Societal pressure – young girls are compelled to conform in society and prepare for motherhood by playing with toys and wearing clothes that are specifically designed for and marketed to them.
She attacked how Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was used to justify male domination at home and in society.
She argued that women were forced to live a life of domestic servitude, on the grounds this was their true role.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Works
Gilman criticised how girls were socialised into an expectation of domestic servitude in “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) and “Women and Economics” (1898).
She believed there was no rational reason why women should not play an equal economic role, as they were just as intelligent and capable, so should have equal opportunities.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: As Feminist
Gilman campaigned for more radical ideas on the destruction of the traditional nuclear family, replacing it with communal living and symmetrical roles for men and women.
Though a liberal reformer, many of her ideas at the time, would have been supported by socialist or radical feminists.
Simone de Beauvoir 1908 - 1986
Simone de Beauvoir was an early French radical existential feminist and a companion of Jean-Paul Sartre, with a philosophy which argued women must impose their free will on the world.
Simone de Beauvoir: Key Ideas
Sex versus gender – ‘one is not born, but rather becomes a woman’.
Otherness – men are perceived as the ‘norm’ and women deviate from this norm.
She believed women had for too long lived a life according to rules imposed by men, which she saw as “bad faith”.
Simone de Beauvoir: The Other
She developed a notion of gender, in which women conformed to an expected role in society, which men controlled e.g. that they should nurture children, which is learned as girls.
This led to the idea of the “Other” in which men defined women as fundamentally different from the norm and inferior to them.
Progress could only be made if they became conscious of their own identity, through self-liberation and escaping from a domestic and family role imposed on them by men.
