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67 GILMAN, Charlotte Perkins. The Home. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1903 “shall the home be our world . . . or the world be our home?” First edition, first printing, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, “To Frau Adele Gerber, with the compliments of the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Dec. 1903”. This superb provenance highlights the strength of the pre-First World War international women’s movement, the recipient being a prominent Austrian suffragist and founder of the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance. The Home is a development of her work in Women and Economics (1898). Dedicating the present work to “a public accustomed only to the unquestioning acceptance of the home as something perfect, holy, quite above discussion” (p. 3), Gilman argued for the reform of the domestic institution, and described this attack on the domestic sphere as “the most heretical – and the most amusing – of anything I’ve done” ( The Living ). Adele Gerber (1863–1937) was a suffragist and pacifist working in the Austro-Hungarian Empire before and during the First World War. She was a prominent journalist and editor, writing for the socialist feminist periodical Neues Frauenleben (“New Women’s Life”), and was a founding member of the International Women’s Suffrage Alliance (now the International Alliance of Women). Octavo. Original brown cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt, top edge brown. Spine cocked with faint central mark, extremities rubbed, front inner hinge cracked but firm, gutter sometime repaired, gauze just visible, top edge dust toned, a very good copy. £3,500 [161206]
65 GENDER ROLES. Woman’s Rights and What Came of It “1981”. Glasgow: Carslaw & Henderson, 1881 a fantasy of female employment in 1981 An uncommon satirical Victorian handkerchief which envisions the societal repercussions of granting women equal rights. Looking 100 years ahead to 1981, the illustrations depict the laughable role reversal of women serving in traditionally male-dominated careers while men are relegated to the domestic sphere. Being given the vote allows the women of 1981 to serve in the army, navy, and police; to appear in court (depicted as “Lady Chief Justicesses” and the barrister “Free & Independant &c.”); to run for political office (with placards reading “Plump
66 GILMAN, Charlotte Perkins. Women and Economics.
for Mrs Dubblechin”); to pursue academic careers (three cap-wearing academics gaze through telescopes); to become footmen, mechanics, telegraph deliverers, and athletes. Men, in contrast, are sidelined into pastoral vignettes captioned “Perfect Bliss”, “Hard Work”, and “Nothing to Do”, or surrounded by the drudgery of housekeeping and childcare. This anti-suffrage handkerchief “materialises 19th-century opposition to campaigns for women’s rights, and demonstrates the fears many opponents had about what would happen if supposedly ‘natural’ gender roles were disrupted” (Museum of New Zealand). It was registered as design no. 364805 on 7 May 1881 by Carslaw & Henderson, muslin manufacturers at 68 Gordon Street, Glasgow. It is also included in the list of printed fabric designs registered between 5 February 1880 and 6 June 1882 held at the National Archives. We have traced survivals in five collections, including Lisa Unger Baskin’s at Duke University, and two others through private collections and auction records. Original white cotton handkerchief (535 × 600 mm), overprinted in black with illustrations depicting women of the future working in traditionally male-dominated fields (under the curlicue headings Army, Law, Navy, Politics, Police, and Science) and men undertaking stereotypical women’s work, lettered “Registered No. 364805” along one edge. Creased from folding as often, impression faded, scattered brown spots and marks, a few small holes and one 3 × 2 cm L-shaped perforation in Navy segment, nonetheless a scarce piece, well preserved. ¶ Not in Schoeser, Printed Handkerchiefs , 1988. £4,500 [156413]
Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1898 economic equality between the sexes
First edition, first printing, of “the most brilliant and original contribution to the woman question since John Stuart Mill’s essays on The Subjection of Women ” (Bederman, p. 122). This argument for economic equality between the sexes, which develops the “sexuo-economic” paradigm that is so essential to Gilman’s work, secured her international reputation and has remained essential to the subsequent development of feminist thought and philosophy. Still considered one of the most important feminist thinkers in the United States, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) asserted that women’s economic dependence on men was a core evil that prevented all members of society from reaching their true potential, and that women’s political and financial independence was an asset, improving conditions for all members of the family. “So persuasive did her readers find her calls for progressive changes in sexual relations that Charlotte was hailed as the brains of the woman’s movement” (Davis, p. 202). Reviewers described it as “the book of the age”, and Florence Kelley called it “the first real, substantial contribution made by a woman to the science of economics”. Octavo. Original red buckram, printed paper spine label, untrimmed edges. Title page device. Bookseller’s ticket (Brentano’s of New York) on rear pastedown. Extremities rubbed, corners a little worn, expertly repaired along spine and inner hinges, spine label browned with some loss, occasional chips and tears to friable leaf edges, including tear at lower edge of pp. 1–2, internally a very bright, clean copy. ¶ Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917 , 1995; Cynthia Davis, Charlotte Perkins Gilman: A Biography , 2010; Linda Wagner-Martin & Cathy N. Davidson, The Oxford Book of Women’s Writing in the United States , 1995, p. 41. £2,500 [126900]
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All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
LOUDER THAN WORDS
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