The novelist and social theorist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, whose writings were widely read and discussed in the early twentieth century, played an important role in the debate about the theories of Charles Darwin and their application to society. Darwin’s theory of evolution did not directly apply to social ideology, but various intellectuals of a human society need not be competitive, but can emerge through collective action within society.
Gilman identified herself with this latter ideological camp and applied evolutionary theory in the movement for social change. The central thesis of this group of Social Darwinists was that although people, like all life, are the products of natural evolutionary forces, the principles of change that determine the development of organisms have in work that is societally relevant and that makes the best use of that person’s talents.
Gilman was not merely engaged in an intellectual debate. Motivated by her ethical vision and convinced of the plasticity of human nature, Gilman vehemently sought to break the molds into which people, especially women, had been thrust. In both her fiction and her social theory she urges women to further social evolution of a balance that would include what she saw as female qualities of cooperation and nurturance.
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