Charlotte Perkins Gilmans Cupid in the Kitchen Essay -- Cupid

Charlotte Perkins Gilmans Cupid in the Kitchen As a reader in the 1990s its tempting to see Charlotte Perkins Gilmans Cupid in the Kitchen as revolutionary and ahead of its time. She proposes the effected professionalization of the nutritive and execretive functions of society, a radical, if not revolutionary notion. However, in the illuminate of the fin-de-siecle birth of the modern feminist movement, Gilman is and one voice in many crying for economic and social justice for women. In effect, the rhetorical situation of 1898 demanded and created this conference as it does on the whole discourse (Bitzer 5). Gilmans Cupid is a inborn and elegant response to the conditions which created it the continuing surplus of unmarried women in Britain and the States as verified by census data, and the persistent injustice of the force domestic servitude of married women. One need only look as far as the literature of the 1890s to see that womens issues influenced the thin king of many intellectuals. The discourse of the period is obsessed with the proper roles for women, debate about suffrage, and considerations of what to do with all the odd women who couldnt find husbands. As early as 1860 census data indicated that more and more women were remaining single and unmarried (Showalter viii). In an study written for The Edinburgh Review Harriet Martineau argued that because there were not enough husbands to go around, girls should be educated and trained to be self-supporting (Showalter ix). By the end of the atomic number 6 the numbers of unmarried women lacking economic support reached crisis proportions. This event, as practically or more than any other, precipitated the feminist movement of the late ordinal an... ... surprise. Economics drove the rhetorical situation in which Cupid was produced as it drives the rhetorical situation in which we return to Gilman for enlightenment now. Similarities in the rhetorical situations of read er, lawsuit and author create the common ground that makes Gilman seem so topical, but it is the clarity of her vision and the simple logic of her proposition that makes her work so remarkable. Works Cited Bitzer, Lloyd F. The Rhetorical Situation. Philosophy & Rhetoric 1.1 (1968) 1-14. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Women and Economics Cupid in the Kitchen. A World of Ideas Essential Readings for College Writers. ed. Lee A. Jacobus (Boston St. Martins, 1990) 208-19. Showalter, Elaine. introduction. The Odd Women, by George Gissing (New York Pennguin, 1983) vii-xxvi. *