The Rudimentary Gender Economy

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in the late 19th century, was re-discovered and re-evaluated in the second-wave feminist movement as a foremother of American feminist research due to her prominent Gothic short story "The Yellow Wall-Paper". As the further exploration of some of her other works such as her biblical masterpiece Women and Economics, her utopian novel Herland and a bunch of typical short stories, her values, more than a Gothic taleteller, pertained to her absorption of utopian theories, Marxism and Darwinism and her first delineation of the bond among economy, patriarchy, femininity, motherhood, domesticity and feminist literature.With respect to Elaine Showalter, a feminist, and her remark, Gilman's proposal of the rudimentary gender economy should be embedded in a systematic literature structure rather than an isolated entity. Therefore, it is inevitable to weave the network between Gilman's ignored works and the modern feminist theories, and to search for Gilman's contemporary contributions by means of the Marxist Feminism, which was proposed in the second-wave feminist movement, and which, instead of a simple integration of Marxism and Feminism, was the interpretation of the cause of women's subordinated position at home and in the working places by discussing the dissolution of matriarchal community, the appearance of monogamous marriage, family, private property and the state, the emergence of sexual division of labor and the degeneration of women writer's literary status.And the research significance rests on more. In light of the literature review, in the Chinese academic world, where most Gilman scholars paid attention to her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" but neglected the significance of her other works, and where most of Chinese Marxist Feminists only focused on the theoretical research without any textual analysis, tremendous work will be done for the author to explore Gilman's economic feminist thinking on the basis of her works by the means of Marxist Feminism. Furthermore, given our national situations, China upholds the guidance of Marxism, encounters the return of the "Victorian Cult of Femininity" and witnesses women plagued by the great pressure along with unequal treatments in the deepening financial crisis. For this reason, the author is seeking for answers from Gilman's works to today's gender paradox.Given the research significance above, the thesis will seek to answer these questions:what is Gilman's rudimentary gender economy from the sociological and literary perspectives? What is it advances and limitations compared with modern feminist theories?The thesis is divided into four chapters besides introduction and conclusion.Chapter 1 will deliver further introduction to Charlotte Perkins Gilman, her works, her feminist thoughts and the Marxist Feminism.Chapter 2 will give the overview on the social background for Gilman's rudimentary gender economy.Chapter 3 will dwell on the elaboration of Gilman's gender economy in the sociological aspect.Chapter 4 will focus on the elaboration of Gilman's gender economy in the literary aspect.The last part will draw the conclusion.As the Marxist Feminism will be applied to analyze Gilman's works, it will be perceived that her rudimentary gender economy has partially outshined the Marxism which is sex-bind, but is trapped into the racism, nationalism and imperialism in this thesis.