Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Born on July 3, 1860, in Hartford, Connecticut, Charlotte Perkins Gilman was raised in near-poverty after her father, the writer Frederick Beecher Perkins, abandoned the family shortly after her birth. Her mother, forbidden by her estranged husband from showing physical affection, raised Charlotte in a succession of relatives' homes, moving nineteen times in eighteen years. Gilman was largely self-educated, attending the Rhode Island School of Design briefly before working as a commercial artist. In 1884 she married the painter Charles Walter Stetson and sank into a severe postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter. The specialist S. Weir Mitchell prescribed his infamous "rest cure", complete bed rest, no intellectual activity, which drove her to the edge of madness, an experience she transmuted into "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892), a story so disturbing it reportedly convinced Mitchell to alter his treatment. She divorced Stetson in 1894, scandalizing the press by sending her daughter to live with her ex-husband and his new wife. She lectured across the country, published Women and Economics (1898), a landmark argument for female financial independence, and wrote the feminist utopian novel Herland (1915). She founded and single-handedly wrote every word of The Forerunner magazine for seven years. Diagnosed with inoperable breast cancer in 1932, she chose chloroform over prolonged suffering and died on August 17, 1935, leaving a note that read: "I have preferred chloroform to cancer."

In 1887, after a breakdown following her daughter's birth, Gilman submitted to Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell's rest cure: 'live as domestic a life as far as possible' and 'never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again.' She obeyed for three months, came near what she called utter mental ruin, then cast the advice aside and went back to work.