Una città per le donne borghesi: la rivoluzione domestica di Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In 19th- and early 20th-century literary representations of the encounter of modern subjects with the city, the person who could stroll at ease in the urban space was male. Due to the ideology of separate spheres the flâneuse could not exist. Yet women were indeed present on the city streets as workers, activists, consumers and social reformers, though they did not share the detached approach of the flâneur. They embraced the opportunities for change and freedom provided by the urban space and imagined cities where, thanks to the reorganization of living facilities, they would participate in the social, cultural and economic life of their communities. Charlotte Perkins Gilman believed that only a domestic revolution would allow women to become economically independent and culturally free. While in her non-fiction she debunked the mythology of the home and argued for the professionalizing of domestic work and child care, in her literary writing she depicted the more efficient and equitable society that women, when freed from the burden of domesticity thanks to collective housekeeping facilities, would build.