Other editions of book The Crux

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Long out of print, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novel The Crux is an important early feminist work that brings to the fore complicated issues of gender, citizenship, eugenics, and frontier nationalism. First published serially in the feminist journal The Forerunner in 1910, The Crux tells the story of a group of New England women who move west to start a boardinghouse for men in Colorado. The innocent central character, Vivian Lane, falls in love with Morton Elder, who has both gonorrhea and syphilis. The concern of the novel is not so much that Vivian will catch syphilis, but that, if she were to marry and have children with Morton, she would harm the "national stock." The novel was written, in Gilman’s words, as a "story . . . for young women to read . . . in order that they may protect themselves and their children to come." What was to be protected was the civic imperative to produce "pureblooded" citizens for a utopian ideal.Dana Seitler’s introduction provides historical context, revealing The Crux as an allegory for social and political anxieties—including the rampant insecurities over contagion and disease—in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. Seitler highlights the importance of The Crux to understandings of Gilman’s body of work specifically and early feminism more generally. She shows how the novel complicates critical history by illustrating the biological argument undergirding Gilman’s feminism. Indeed, The Crux demonstrates how popular conceptions of eugenic science were attractive to feminist authors and intellectuals because they suggested that ideologies of national progress and U.S. expansionism depended as much on women and motherhood as on masculine contest. Charlotte Perkins Gilman ( July 3, 1860 – August 17, 1935) was a prominent American feminist, sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform. She was a utopian feminist during a time when her accomplishments were exceptional for women, and she served as a role model for future generations of feminists because of her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle. Her best remembered work today is her semi-autobiographical short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" which she wrote after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis. Early life Gilman was born on July 3, 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut, to Mary Perkins (formerly Mary Fitch Westcott) and Frederic Beecher Perkins. She had only one brother, Thomas Adie, who was fourteen months older, because a physician advised Mary Perkins that she might die if she bore other children. During Charlotte's infancy, her father moved out and abandoned his wife and children, leaving them in an impoverished state.[1] Since their mother was unable to support the family on her own, the Perkins were often in the presence of her father's aunts, namely Isabella Beecher Hooker, a suffragist, Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom's Cabin) and Catharine Beecher. Her schooling was erratic: she attended seven different schools, for a cumulative total of just four years, ending when she was fifteen. Her mother was not affectionate with her children. To keep them from getting hurt as she had been, she forbade her children to make strong friendships or read fiction. In her autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Gilman wrote that her mother showed affection only when she thought her young daughter was asleep.Although she lived a childhood of isolated, impoverished loneliness, she unknowingly prepared herself for the life that lay ahead by frequently visiting the public library and studying ancient civilizations on her own. Additionally, her father's love for literature influenced her, and years later he contacted her with a list of books he felt would be worthwhile for her to read. Much of Gilman's youth was spent in Providence, Rhode Island. What friends she had were mainly male, and she was unashamed, for her time, to call herself a "tomboy." ...

Fans of feminist trailblazer Charlotte Perkins Gilman are in for a treat. Gathered in The Collected Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman are three of her most famous works:The Yellow WallpaperThis short story is one of the most popular pre-1923 texts in the English language, ranking third only to The Bible and Shakespeare for free downloads on Project Gutenberg. The strange, haunting vignette delineates a woman’s post-partum mental breakdown. First published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine, it is a landmark work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the 19th century toward women's physical and mental health. It anticipates the works of Sylvia Plath and other feminist writers seven decades later.HerlandThis remarkable work from 1915 is a Utopian novel about an isolated society composed entirely of women, who reproduce via parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction). The result is an ideal social order: free of war, conflict, and domination. The story’s set up is like something from the movies: Vandyk "Van" Jennings, a student of sociology, and two friends (Terry O. Nicholson and Jeff Margrave), form an expedition party to explore an area of uncharted land where it is rumored lives a society consisting entirely of women. The men do not entirely believe the rumors because they are unable to think of a way how human reproduction could occur without males. The men speculate about what a society of women would be like, each guessing differently based on the stereotype of women which he holds most dear: Jeff regarding women as things to be served and protected; Terry viewing them as things to be conquered and won. When the explorers reach their destination, they proceed with caution, hiding the biplane they arrive in, and trying to keep themselves hidden in the forests that border the land. They are quickly found by three young women who they realize are observing them from the treetops. After attempting to catch the girls with trickery, the men end up chasing the young women towards a town or village. The women outrun them easily and disappear among the houses, which, Van notes are exceptionally well made and attractive. After meeting the first inhabitants of this new land (which Van names Herland) the men proceed more cautiously, noting that the girls they met were strong, agile, and completely unafraid. Their caution is warranted because as the men enter the town where the girls disappeared, they become surrounded by a large group of women who march them towards an official looking building. The three men attempt an escape but are swiftly and easily overpowered by the large group of women and eventually anesthetized…The remainder of the Utopian story develops in delightful, unexpected ways. The central theme is defining gender—the roles, how it is socially constructed, and how it is viewed as unchangeable by both genders. The idea of defining genders begins when the men first meet the women of Herland. In comparison to the women of their world, the men view the women of Herland to have masculine physical features: having short, functional hair and lacking curves. The women are physically strong and demonstrate this by building huge buildings in their country.The Man Made WorldOriginally published as Our Androcentric Culture, or The Man Made World in 1911, this is one of the first feminist works to explore the now familiar credo that women are peace-loving nurturers while men dominate through violence. This is Gilman's exposition of Lester Ward's theory "that woman is the race type, and the male, originally but a sex type, reaching a later equality with the female, and, in the human race, becoming her master for a considerable historic period." An important and prescient work, published fifty-eight years before Kate Millet’s Sexual Politics.

About the Book In historical fiction the plot is set in the past, and pays attention to the manners, social conditions and other details of the period portrayed. Some authors choose to include famous historical figures in their fictional plots, so that audiences can imagine how those individuals might have responded to the plots and environments established by the author. The Western literary component of this genre is founded in the early 19th century works of such authors as Sir Walter Scott, Honoré de Balzac, James Fenimore Cooper, and Leo Tolstoy. Also in this Book The romance novel, which is sometimes termed the romantic novel, places its primary focus on the development of a romantic relationship and love between two people. The sub-genres of the romance novel include: fantasy, historical romance, paranormal fiction, and science fiction. Romance novels existed in ancient Greece, and were also to be found in the literary fiction of the 18th and 19th centuries in the works of such authors as Samuel Richardson and Jane Austen. Also in this Book Titles covering drama and theater in the United States describe that part of the European theatrical tradition, dating back to ancient Greek theater, that is heavily influenced by British theatre. US drama has been heavily focussed on New York City at Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway. Outside of New York, larger cities have professional regional or resident theater companies that produce their own seasons. some works aspiring to eventually play in New York. US theater also has an active community theater culture, relying on local volunteers. About us Leopold Classic Library has the goal of making available to readers the classic books that have been out of print for decades. While these books may have occasional imperfections, we consider that only hand checking of every page ensures readable content without poor picture quality, blurred or missing text etc. That's why we: republish only hand checked books; that are high quality; enabling readers to see classic books in original formats; that are unlikely to have missing or blurred pages. You can search "Leopold Classic Library" in categories of your interest to find other books in our extensive collection. Happy reading!

The Crux portrays a multigenerational group of woman who flee the repressive traditions of their New England village on the advice of a woman physician. Migrating to the free and progressive West, they find personal growth and self-fulfillment in a Colorado town. An argument against the nineteeth-century ideal of female "innocence" that left women vulnerable to sexually transmitted disease, the novel invokes classic frontier ideology along with a feminist critique of the male-dominated medical establishment in order to argue for women's sexual self-determination. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) was a pioneering figure in twentieth-century feminism, an intrepid social theorist, writer, and activist. Originally serialized in Gilman's magazine The Forerunner in 1911, The Crux envisions many of her best-known reformist ideas for gender relations and social organization. In their Massachusetts hometown, her female protagonists languish out of duty to Victorian values that circumscribe women's personal and intellectual development. In Colorado, however they help to establish a thriving new world founded on many of Gilman's principles for progressive social change, including socialized housekeeping, professionalized child care, and economic independence for white, middle-class women.