What Diantha Did
eBook - PDF

What Diantha Did

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

What Diantha Did

About this book

This edition of What Diantha Did makes newly available Charlotte Perkins Gilman's first novel, complete with an in-depth introduction. First published serially in Gilman's magazine The Forerunner in 1909–10, the novel tells the story of Diantha Bell, a young woman who leaves her home and her fiancé to start a housecleaning business. A resourceful heroine, Diantha quickly expands her business into an enterprise that includes a maid service, cooked food delivery service, restaurant, and hotel. By assigning a cash value to women's "invisible" work, providing a means for the well-being and moral uplift of working girls, and releasing middle-class and leisure-class women from the burden of conventional domestic chores, Diantha proves to her family and community the benefits of professionalized housekeeping.

In her introduction to the novel, Charlotte J. Rich highlights Gilman's engagement with such hotly debated Progressive Era issues as the "servant question," the rise of domestic science, and middle-class efforts to protect and aid the working girl. She illuminates the novel's connections to Gilman's other feminist works, including "The Yellow Wall-Paper" and Herland; to her personal life; and to her commitment to women's social and economic freedom. Rich contends that the novel's engagement with class and race makes it particularly significant to the newly complex understanding of Gilman that has emerged in recent scholarship. What Diantha Did provides essential insight into Charlotte Perkins Gilman's important legacy of social thought.

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Yes, you can access What Diantha Did by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & Literature General. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Acknowledgments.
  3. Introduction by Charlotte J. Rich.
  4. Dedication to the Housewife.
  5. I. Handicapped.
  6. II. An Unnatural Daughter.
  7. III. Breakers.
  8. IV. A Crying Need.
  9. V. A Friend in Need.
  10. VI. The Cynosure.
  11. VII. Heresy and Schism.
  12. VIII. ‘‘Locked Inside.’’
  13. IX. ‘‘Sleeping In.’’
  14. X. Union House.
  15. XI. The Power of the Screw.
  16. XII. Like a Banyan Tree.
  17. XIII. All This.
  18. XIV. And Heaven Beside.