This edition of What Diantha Did makes newly available Charlotte Perkins Gilmanâs first novel, complete with an in-depth introduction. First published serially in Gilmanâs magazine The Forerunner in 1909â10, the novel tells the story of Diantha Bell, a young woman who leaves her home and her fiance to start a housecleaning business. A resourceful heroine, Diantha quickly expands her business into an enterprise that includes a maid service, cooked food delivery service, restaurant, and hotel. By assigning a cash value to womenâs âinvisibleâ work, providing a means for the well-being and moral uplift of working girls, and releasing middle-class and leisure-class women from the burden of conventional domestic chores, Diantha proves to her family and community the benefits of professionalized housekeeping. In her introduction to the novel, Charlotte J. Rich highlights Gilmanâs engagement with such hotly debated Progressive Era issues as the âservant question,â the rise of domestic science, and middle-class efforts to protect and aid the working girl. She illuminates the novelâs connections to Gilmanâs other feminist works, including âThe Yellow Wall-Paperâ and Herland ; to her personal life; and to her commitment to womenâs social and economic freedom. Rich contends that the novelâs engagement with class and race makes it particularly significant to the newly complex understanding of Gilman that has emerged in recent scholarship. What Diantha Did provides essential insight into Charlotte Perkins Gilmanâs important legacy of social thought.
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