A lack of engagement? The containment of war in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s the Forerunner

Nolan, E (2017) A lack of engagement? The containment of war in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s the Forerunner. Women's Writing, 24 (1). pp. 94-108. ISSN 0969-9082

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Abstract

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Although she produced a significant body of writing during the First World War, much of it engaged with social and political issues of the day, Charlotte Perkins Gilman is rarely considered in debates about women’s war writings. Through an analysis of her journalism, short fiction and utopian narratives, this article seeks to position Gilman’s writings within the context of debates on war and gender. It argues that her work is informed by the conflict, but that her complex and contradictory framing, and sometimes obscuring, of the war within her periodical The Forerunner has led to her marginalization in feminist considerations of the female war text.