[3] Although she lived a childhood of isolated, impoverished loneliness, she unknowingly prepared herself for the life that lay ahead by frequently visiting the public library and studying physics, literature, history (particularly ancient civilizations) on her own.

In 1878, the eighteen-year-old enrolled in classes at the Rhode Island School of Design with the monetary help of her absent father,[7] and subsequently supported herself as an artist of trade cards.

The treatment typically involved a strict regimen of bed rest, isolation from mental and physical stimulation, limited social interaction, and a highly regulated diet.

While some patients reported improvement in their symptoms, others experienced worsening mental health and physical debilitation due to prolonged inactivity and social isolation.

A good proportion of her diary entries from the time she gave birth to her daughter until several years later describe the oncoming depression that she was to face.

[14] Along with many women during the late 19th century, Perkins-Gilman dealt with the trauma of the rest cure treatment due to the lack of societal attitudes, limited understanding of mental health, and the authority of the medical profession.

However, as awareness and understanding of mental health improved over time, the rest cure fell out of favor, recognized as an outdated and potentially harmful approach to treatment.

[19][20] Following the separation from her husband, Gilman moved with her daughter to Pasadena, California, where she became active in feminist and reformist organizations such as the Pacific Coast Women's Press Association, the Woman's Alliance, the Economic Club, the Ebell Society (named after Adrian John Ebell), the Parents Association, and the State Council of Women, in addition to writing and editing the Bulletin, a journal published by one of the earlier-mentioned organizations.

As a delegate, she represented California in 1896 at both the National American Woman Suffrage Association convention in Washington, D.C., and the International Socialist and Labor Congress in London.

[26] In 1890, she was introduced to the Nationalist Clubs movement which worked to "end capitalism's greed and distinctions between classes while promoting a peaceful, ethical, and truly progressive human race."

Published in the Nationalist magazine, her poem "Similar Cases" was a satirical review of people who resisted social change, and she received positive feedback from critics for it.

[27] As a successful lecturer who relied on giving speeches as a source of income, her fame grew along with her social circle of similar-minded activists and writers of the feminist movement.

[33] The narrator in the story must do as her husband (who is also her doctor) demands, although the treatment he prescribes contrasts directly with what she truly needs—mental stimulation and the freedom to escape the monotony of the room to which she is confined.

Gilman critiques the notion of the home as solely a woman's domain and advocates for social and economic reforms to empower women and improve their well-being.

"The Home: Its Work and Influence" is a seminal text in the early feminist movement and continues to be studied for its insights into gender, society, and the domestic sphere.

The Crux is an important early feminist work of fiction that brings to the fore complicated issues of gender, citizenship, eugenics, and frontier nationalism.

First published serially in the feminist journal The Forerunner in 1910, The Crux tells the story of a group of New England women who move west to start a boardinghouse for men in Colorado.

In 1888 Perkins-Gilman published her first book, Art Gems for the Home and Fireside (1888); however, it was her first volume of poetry, In This Our World (1893), a collection of satirical poems, that first brought her recognition.

The short-lived paper's printing came to an end as a result of a social bias against her lifestyle which included being an unconventional mother and a woman who had divorced a man.

By presenting material in her magazine that would "stimulate thought", "arouse hope, courage and impatience", and "express ideas which need a special medium", she aimed to go against the mainstream media which was overly sensational.

She argued that there should be no difference in the clothes that little girls and boys wear, the toys they play with, or the activities they do, and described tomboys as perfect humans who ran around and used their bodies freely and healthily.

[47] "The ideal woman," Gilman wrote, "was not only assigned a social role that locked her into her home, but she was also expected to like it, to be cheerful and gay, smiling and good-humored."

Ultimately the restructuring of the home and manner of living will allow individuals, especially women, to become an "integral part of the social structure, in close, direct, permanent connection with the needs and uses of society."

Elizabeth Keyser notes, "In Herland the supposedly superior sex becomes the inferior or disadvantaged ..."[52] In this utopian world, the women reproduce asexually and consider it an honor to be mothers.

Gilman uses this story to confirm the stereotypically devalued qualities of women are valuable, show strength, and shatters traditional utopian structure for future works.

[53] Essentially, Gilman creates Herland's society to have women hold all the power, showing more equality in this world, alluding to changes she wanted to see in her lifetime.

Gilman's racism led her to espouse eugenicist beliefs, claiming that Old Stock Americans were surrendering their country to immigrants who were diluting the nation's racial purity.

In "When I Was a Witch", the narrator witnesses and intervenes in instances of animal use as she travels through New York, liberating work horses, cats, and lapdogs by rendering them "comfortably dead".

One anonymous letter submitted to the Boston Transcript read, "The story could hardly, it would seem, give pleasure to any reader, and to many whose lives have been touched through the dearest ties by this dread disease, it must bring the keenest pain.

In her autobiography she admitted that "unfortunately my views on the sex question do not appeal to the Freudian complex of today, nor are people satisfied with a presentation of religion as a help in our tremendous work of improving this world.