Benigna Machiavelli - Softcover

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born Charlotte Anna Perkins on July 3,1860, in Hartford, Connecticut. She died on August 17, 1935, in Pasadena, California. Her death was a suicide by chloroform, a decision she made as a result of a breast cancer diagnosed as fatal. In an article regarding suicide, she had written that it was “an insult to allow death in pitiful degradation.” As in so many things, Gilman was ahead of her time in her views on euthanasia. Although this particular article was written knowing she was going to take her life, she had addressed the subject of suicide long before. Lyman Beecher was her great grandfather on her paternal side, and she was influenced by this remarkable family’s progressive ideas and attitudes. When her father, Frederick Beecher Perkins, left his family with little to no financial support, her mother, Mary Fitch Wescott Perkins, had few alternatives; she needed to rely on the charity of relatives, which included the Beechers. As a child, Gilman was visited by her great aunts Harriet Beecher Stowe and Catharine Beecher, the latter widely known in America at the time for having defined “a new role for women within the household.” Gilman was sought out and respected by George Bernard Shaw, who asked her to read Candide and give him her opinion. The New York Fabians spoke of her as “a worthy female counterpart of G.B. Shaw.” When H.G. Wells came to the United States in 1904, she was the one person he asked to meet. Theodore Dreiser also asked to meet her.

Until recently, feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) had been best known for her nonfiction writing, including Women and Economics (1898). Today, however, her fictional works--especially The Yellow Wallpaper and Herland --frequent high school and college reading lists. Like Herland, Benigna Machiavelli was first published serially in Gilman's own magazine, The Forerunner , appearing in 1914; it is now published in book form for the first time. A very funny fable, Benigna Machiavelli is the "autobiography" of 18-year-old Benigna MacAvelly, who is disgusted by her father's tyranny and abuse and sets out to free her mother, her older sister, and herself from his presence. At that time (the turn of the century), women and children had very little control, and yet through education, perseverance, and not a little manipulation, Benigna succeeds. Appropriate for academic and women's studies collections.
- Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield Coll. Lib., McMinnville, Ore.
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