By the waning years of the nineteenth century, the Golden State had already been home to a number of feminist writers. But few were more prominent in their time than Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who came to California in 1888.

Best known today for her novella The Yellow Wall-Paper and her Utopian novel, Herland—the story of a nation of women without men—Gilman was also author of hundreds of poems, like the satiric "Matriatism."

Small is the thought of "Fatherland,"
With all its pride and worth;
With all its history of death;
Of fire and sword and wasted breath—
By the great new thought which quickeneth—
The thought of "Mother Earth."
Man fights for wealth and rule and pride,
For the “name” that is his alone;
Comes woman, wakening to her power,
Comes woman, opening the hour
That sees life as one growing flower,
All children as her own.

Fathers have fought for their Fatherland
With slaughter and death and dearth,
But mothers, in service and love’s increase,
Will labor together for our release,
From war-stained past to a world at peace,
Our fair, sweet Mother Earth.

Although Gilman's literary reputation languished after her death in 1935, lately she has drawn the interest of contemporary readers who find new relevance in her work. She has even been named one of the most influential women of the twentieth century.

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