Charlotte Perkins Gilman

A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate!

It makes me laugh, knowing all I do now, to think of us three boys⁠—nothing else; three audacious impertinent boys⁠—butting into an unknown country without any sort of a guard or defense.

We are the only animal species in which the female depends on the male for food, the only animal species in which the sex-relation is also an economic relation.

One man, truly aroused and redirecting his energies, can change his whole life in thirty years.

John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.

They were inconveniently reasonable, those women.

“Love with man is an episode, with woman a history.”

But I! It was as if I had slept, and, in my sleep, they had stolen my world.

John is a physician, and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.

“These ‘laws of nature,’ ” Zava gently asked, “are they all the laws you have?”

Wealth, power, social distinction, fame⁠—not only these, but home and happiness, reputation, ease and pleasure, her bread and butter⁠—all, must come to her through a small gold ring.

“It is afternoon,” she repeated. “Let that sink in!”

I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a draught, and shut the window.

Mother-love with them was not a brute passion, a mere “instinct,” a wholly personal feeling; it was⁠—a religion.

But⁠—she must not even look as if she wanted it!

“Nellie,” said I sternly. “You never told me you were married!”

The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering, unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.

When a woman chose to be a mother, she allowed the child-longing to grow within her till it worked its natural miracle.

Love never yet went with self-interest.

Society is us⁠—taking care of ourselves.