Catharine Beecher Compare Contrast Essay

In the article Catharine Beecher and Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Architects of female power, Valerie Gill compares the beliefs of both Charlotte Gilman and her great-aunt Catharine Beecher. One of, if not the most important, factor of this article that the reader sees repeatedly is the environment in which the american woman tenants should be the center of all their commerce. This process continued to establish the idea that what initiates in the woman's home will continue to emit throughout the lives of the woman and her family. Both Beecher and Gilman attempted to define the roles of american women beginning with their private life and continuing on into their public life. Although both Catharine Beecher and Charlotte Gilman had “disparate notions about what kind of lives american women should lead..” the foundation of the argument appears to be, regardless of one's interpretation, based on the same reality. Gill uses many different varieties of supporting evidence. Not only from Charlotte Gilman’s abundance of lectures and articles including Applepieville and some from her books Moving the Mountain and Women and Economics. The author also pulls supporting evidence from Catharine beecher’s books American Woman’s Home and A Treatise on
Valerie, quoting things from each book, displayed how the two women felt that the way the home should be built was centered around the woman. For example, Gill says Charlotte Gilman states in her book Moving the Mountain “Gilman proposes a community in which central housekeeping services and communal eating halls displace labor of the individual households…freeing the majority of women for a new range of unorthodox pursuits..” The author also states that “Powerfully reinforcing the boundary between private and public space, Beecher codified femininity in the spatial and material layout of the