Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Crux (Annotated) Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Differentiated book- It has a historical context with research of the time-The Crux by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It is an important early feminist work that highlights complicated issues of gender, citizenship, eugenics, and border nationalism. First published serially in feminist magazine The Forerunner in 1910, The Crux tells the story of a group of New England women moving west to start a men's pension in Colorado. Innocent central character Vivian Lane falls in love with Morton Elder, who has gonorrhea and syphilis. The novel's concern is not so much that Vivian contracts syphilis, but that, if she married and had children with Morton, it would harm the "national stock." The novel was written, in Gilman's words, as a "story ... for young women to read ... so they can protect themselves and their children." What had to be protected was the civic imperative to produce "pure-blooded" citizens for a utopian ideal. Dana Seitler's introduction provides historical context, revealing The Crux as an allegory for social and political anxieties, including rampant insecurities about contagion and disease, in the United States in the early 1900s. Seitler highlights the importance of The Crux in understanding Gilman's body of work specifically and early feminism in general. She shows how the novel complicates critical history by illustrating the biological argument that underpins Gilman's feminism.