Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) was an American writer, feminist theorist, and social reformer whose work challenged the social and economic constraints placed on women. She is best known for the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892), a landmark of feminist literature that critiques the medical and domestic confinement of women, and for the utopian novel *Herland* (1915), which imagines an all-female society. Gilman also wrote influential nonfiction, including *Women and Economics* (1898), arguing that women’s dependence on men was rooted in economic structures. Through fiction, essays, and lectures, she advocated women’s rights and social change.