Episode Description:

Weird Island is back! In the first episode in over a year and a half, we’ll uncover the story of a gym for women in 1880s Providence, begun by feminist philosopher, lecturer and writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  

Episode Sources:

• “As Near to Flying as One Gets Outside a Circus”: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Providence Ladies’ Sanitary Gymnasium, 1881-1884 - Online Review of Rhode Island History
• The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• Papers of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1846-1961
• Feminist Gothic in "The Yellow Wallpaper" |
• CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN (1860-1935) from The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman Suicide Note, August 17, 1935 from The Right to Die
• 'Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Letters to Martha', by Abigail Rabinowitz
• The Philanthropist and the Physical Educator
• Catharine Beecher | National Women's History Museum
• Catharine Beecher, Champion of Women’s Education - Connecticut History | a CTHumanities Project
• Physiology and Calisthenics. For Schools and Families | Catherine Beecher
• The Origins of American Women’s Exercise – The New Inquiry