An Obstacle

"To the Young Wife" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1893)

This poem was originally published in Perkins Gilman’s first poetry collection, In This Our World, along with “An Obstacle.” “To the Young Wife” challenges gender norms with a series of questions comparing the life of a housewife—cleaning and raising children—with dreams of creating positive change through intelligence and civic duty. Perkins Gilman argues that personal and political growth outside the home makes women better at domestic duties. In other words, engagement in the public sphere will improve the private sphere; the problem is confining women to one (domestic, private) sphere.

"The Anti-Suffragists" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1893)

This is one example of Perkins Gilman’s poems about the women’s suffrage, or voting rights, movement. Like “An Obstacle,” “The Anti-Suffragists” appeared in Gilman’s first poetry collection, In This Our World, but was also included in her second book, Suffrage Songs and Verses. “The Anti-Suffragists” focuses on women who oppose women getting the right to vote. These 19th century “[w]omen uniting against womanhood” include rich women and religious women, as well as women who are ignorant, selfish, and even sometimes good people. The conflict between different communities of women described in this poem can be seen even in 21st century feminist politics surrounding issues such as reproductive rights.

Suffrage Songs and Verses by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1911)

As part of Mary Mark’s “Celebration of Women Writers,” the University of Pennsylvania library digitized Perkins Gilman’s second book of poetry, Suffrage Songs and Verses, published in 1911. Some of poems in this collection come from In This Our World, and/or were previously published in the Woman’s Journal and The Forerunner. Suffrage Songs and Verses demonstrates Perkins Gilman’s political opinions and causes—specifically women’s suffrage. A few years before she died, Perkins Gilman saw America, as a nation, give women the right to vote. This book was both a literary and political statement.

"Song of the Open Road" by Walt Whitman (1856)

Walt Whitman had a huge influence on Perkins Gilman and her poetry. In the introduction of the 2012 In This Our World & Uncollected Poems, the editors note that she “carried with her a copy of Leaves of Grass” (xxiv) on her lecture tours. “Song of the Open Road” was included in Leaves of Grass. Perkins Gilman’s path in “An Obstacle” could be connected to the road in Whitman’s poem. In A Dictionary of Literary Symbols, Ferber explains that in “America [...] there has been almost a cult of the road, a belief of movement itself, notably in Whitman’s ‘Song of the Open Road’ and Jack Kerouac’s On the Road” (151). The speaker’s success in “An Obstacle” is being able to continue down her path, unobstructed, which echoes Whitman’s “open road.”