Explore "Women of To-Day" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
You women of to-day who fear so much / The women of the future, showing how / The dangers of her course are such and such- / What are you now?
Mothers and Wives and Housekeepers, forsooth! / Great names! you cry, full scope to rule and please! / Boom for wise age and energetic youth! - / But are you these?
Housekeepers? Do you then, like those of yore, / Keep house with power and pride, with grace and ease? / No, you keep servants only! What is more, / You don't keep these!
Wives, say you? Wives! Blessed indeed are they / Who hold of love the everlasting keys, / Keeping their husbands' hearts! Alas the day! / You don't keep these!
And mothers? Pitying Heaven! Mark the cry / From cradle death-beds! Mothers on their knees! / Why, half the children born-as children die! / You don't keep these!
And still the wailing babies come and go, / And homes are waste, and husbands' hearts fly far, / There is no hope until you dare to know / The thing you are!