Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Last month, several of you read our Facebook link to Amanda Marcotte’s Slate.com article “A Short History of ‘feminist’ Anti-feminists” and asked for the full Gilman poem we shared. While we warned of the dangers of nostalgia for First Wave Feminism because of its exclusionary vision and goals, some of the ideas and arguments still have relevance for many women worldwide. We think Gilman’s poem “The Anti-Suffragists” is one such work.

Here’s the complete poem by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. You can download the collection, In This Our World, for free from Google Books.

The Anti-Suffragists

Fashionable women in luxurious homes,

With men to feed them, clothe them, pay their bills,

Bow, doff the hat, and fetch the handkerchief;

Hostess or guest, and always so supplied

With graceful deference and courtesy;

Surrounded by their servants, horses, dogs,–

These tell us they have all the rights they want.

***

Successful women who have won their way

Alone, with strength of their unaided arm,

Or helped by friends, or softly climbing up

By the sweet aid of “woman’s influence;”

Successful any way, and caring naught

For any other woman’s un success,–

These tell us they have all the rights they want.

***

Religous women of the feebler sort–

Not the religion of a righteous world,

A free, enlightened, upward-reaching world,

But the religion that considers life

As something to back out of!–whose ideal

Is to renounce, submit, and sacrifice,

Counting on being patted on the head

And given a high chair when they get to heaven,–

These tell us they have all the rights they want.

***

Ignorant women–college-bred sometimes,

But ignorant of life’s realities

And principles of righteous government,

And how the privileges they enjoy

Were won with blood and tears by those before–

Those they condemn, whose ways they now oppose;

Saying, “Why not let well enough alone?

Our world is very pleasant as it is,”–

These tell us they have all the rights they want.

***

And selfish women,–pigs in petticoats,–

Rich, poor, wise, unwise, top or bottom round,

But all sublimely innocent of thought,

And guiltless of ambition, save the one

Deep, voiceless aspiration–to be fed!

These hve no use for rights or duties more.

Duties today are more than they can meet,

And law insures their right to clothes and food,–

They tell us they have all the rights they want.

***

And, more’s the pity, some good women, too;

Good concientious women, with ideas;

Who think–or think they think–that woman’s cause

Is best advanced by letting it alone;

That she somehow is not a human thing,

And not to be helped on by human means,

Just added to humanity–an “L”–

A wing, a branch, an extra, not mankind,–

These tell us they have all the rights they want.

***

And out of these has come a monstrous thing,

A strange, down-sucking whirlpool of disgrace,

Women uniting against womanhood,

And using that great name to hide their sin!

Vain are their words as that old king’s command

Who set his will against the rising tide.

But who shall measure the historic shame

Of these poor traitors–traitors are they all–

To Great Democracy and Womanhood!