When I Was a Witch & Other Stories

A powerful collection of early feminist stories from the activist and writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Gilman created a world that could be viewed from the feminist gaze. She focused on how women were not just stay-at-home mothers they were expected to be but also people who had dreams, who were able to travel and work just as men did, and whose goals included a society where women were just as important as men. In the early 1900s this was striking and revolutionary. The stories in this collection are: A Coincidence; According To Solomon, An Offender, A Middle-Sized Artist, Marthas Mother, Her Housekeeper, When I Was A Witch, Making a Living, A Coincidence, The Cottagette, The Boys and the Butter, My Astonishing Dodo, and A Word In Season.

Foundations of Feminist Fiction. The early 1900s saw a quiet revolution in literature dominated by male adventure heroes. Both men and women moved beyond the norms of the male gaze to write from a different gender perpective, sometimes with female protagonists, but also expressing the universal freedom to write on any subject whatsoever.