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Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kansas suffrage
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Kansas Memory Blog
Between
1896 and 1900, the Kansas Equal Suffrage Association (KESA) published
four poems and one article by writer and women’s rights advocate
Charlotte Perkins Stetson (later Gilman) in their official paper, the Kansas Suffrage Reveille.
While Gilman has achieved an exalted position in the cannon of American
literature, many of her poems and articles survive today only because
libraries and archives preserved copies of obscure little papers like
the Reveille. The Kansas Suffrage Reveille is now available on Kansas Memory. Born
in New England in 1860 and descended from the influential Beecher
family, Charlotte Perkins married Charles Stetson in 1884. In 1888,
after a nervous breakdown, Charlotte took her daughter and moved to
California. She published “The Yellow Wall-Paper” in 1892 and a book of
poems a year later. In 1900, she married Houghton Gilman. Gilman’s
visit to Kansas in 1896 coincided with the publication of KESAs new
monthly paper, which promoted Gilman regularly. Gilman spent most of
June in Kansas speaking in Kansas City, Topeka, Holton, Madison, Eureka,
Howard, Winfield, Concordia, and Yates Center. From Kansas she traveled
to Montreal where she sailed for Liverpool. In the January 1897 issue of the Reveille,
editor Katie Addison noted “Every suffrage club in the state should
have Charlotte Perkins Stetson’s book of poems. They are constantly kept
at headquarters. 50 cents per copy.” Indeed, the new organ for the KESA
regularly featured reports on Gilman (as Charlotte Perkins Stetson) and
promoted her publications which could be purchased from the KESA headquarters. In
1897, the Kansas Agricultural College in Manhattan (now Kansas State
University), offered Gilman a position as a teacher in economics. In her
autobiography, Gilman recounts how flattered she was to receive the
offer since she had never been to college herself. But she declined the
position due to poor health. A list of Gilman’s writings published in the Kansas Suffrage Reveille under the name Charlotte Perkins Stetson follows: A woman – in so far as she beholdeth , Vol. I, No. 6, August 1896 Woman Suffrage and the West , Vol. II, No. 4, June 1897 A Prejudice , Vol. III, No. 10, October 1898 Feminine vanity! O ye gods! , Vol. IV, No. 8, August 1899 O, sister woman! You were created man’s equal , Vol. IV, No. 10, September 1899