The Home: Its Work and Influence

Synopsis

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Home is a scathing attack on the domesticity of women in the early 20th century. Her central argument, that 'the economic independence and specialization of women is essential to the improvement of marriage, motherhood, domestic industry, and racial improvement' resonates in this work. Throughout, she maintains that the liberation of women―and of children and of men, for that matter―requires getting women out of the house, both practically and ideologically.