The Crux [Paperback]

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 29, 2003

Long out of print, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novel The Crux is an important early feminist work that brings to the fore complicated issues of gender, citizenship, eugenics, and frontier nationalism. First published serially in the feminist journal The Forerunner in 1910, The Crux tells the story of a group of New England women who move west to start a boardinghouse for men in Colorado. The innocent central character, Vivian Lane, falls in love with Morton Elder, who has both gonorrhea and syphilis. The concern of the novel is not so much that Vivian will catch syphilis, but that, if she were to marry and have children with Morton, she would harm the "national stock." The novel was written, in Gilman’s words, as a "story . . . for young women to read . . . in order that they may protect themselves and their children to come." What was to be protected was the civic imperative to produce "pureblooded" citizens for a utopian ideal.

Dana Seitler’s introduction provides historical context, revealing The Crux as an allegory for social and political anxieties—including the rampant insecurities over contagion and disease—in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century. Seitler highlights the importance of The Crux to understandings of Gilman’s body of work specifically and early feminism more generally. She shows how the novel complicates critical history by illustrating the biological argument undergirding Gilman’s feminism. Indeed, The Crux demonstrates how popular conceptions of eugenic science were attractive to feminist authors and intellectuals because they suggested that ideologies of national progress and U.S. expansionism depended as much on women and motherhood as on masculine contest.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“What a treat to have another Gilman novel—until now largely ignored—available. We are indebted to Duke University Press for publishing it as a separate piece and to Dana Seitler for her provocative and stimulating introduction. The Crux is in many ways a period piece embodying what today seems outmoded and sometimes outrageous views. Oddly, these same views are also startlingly and wickedly relevant today.”—Ann J. Lane, author of To Herland and Beyond: The Life and Work of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“With reproductive technologies at the center of feminist, medical, and national debate, The Crux offers a fascinating historical perspective on the relationship of reproduction and nationalism. Dana Seitler's introduction offers a useful context in which to read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's quirky, biology-based feminism, her depiction of a women's community in the west, and, generally, the relationship between fiction-writing and the fashioning of gender roles that fueled Gilman's particular brand of activism.”—Priscilla Wald, author of Constituting Americans: Cultural Anxiety and Narrative Form

About the Author

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) was the author of novels, short stories, poems, and works of nonfiction. She is best known for “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892), Women and Economics (1898), and the novel Herland (1915).
Dana Seitler is Assistant Professor of Literary Theory and Cultural Studies at Wayne State University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 184 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books (July 29, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822331675
• ISBN-13: 978-0822331674
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.7 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,310,490 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential, entertaining reading for Gilman fans, August 24, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Crux: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Crux is essential reading for anyone seriously interested in the writings of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Jennifer S. Tuttle's is to be commended for bringing it to readers in this excellent edition. After having read most of Gilman's other fiction, I will admit that I put off reading this one because of its reputation as "the book about venereal disease" (sexually transmitted diseases). I feared it would be didactic, heavy handed, and depressing. Instead, it's like the best of Gilman's "optimistic reform" books: it treats its serious subject with a light touch, conveying its important ideas through appealing characters and a strong plot with Gilman's typical "happy ending." (Some readers might argue that the ending is a bit implausible, but that's part of the interest of this set of Gilman's writings.) At times, it is laugh-out-loud funny. Also, it's not entirely accurate to say that the book is "about" venereal disease, for although the last third of the book discusses the dangers women faced from sexually transmitted diseases in the years before adequate cures had been discovered, there is much more to the story. It portrays the opportunities for self discovery open to women who move from the stultifying conditions of New England villages to the open life in a new city in the Colorado mountains. The women characters (on whom the story focuses) range from young unmarried women to a seemingly dried-up old maid, a woman doctor, and one of literature's most delightful grandmothers.

My only serious objection to this edition is that University of Delaware Press, for some unaccountable reason, has elected to publish this book only in an expensive hardback edition. The story, along with Tuttle's illuminating introduction and clear explanatory notes, would be highly suitable as a teaching text if the book were available in a reasonably-priced paper edition.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Depends on Why You're Reading It, August 2, 2005

By 

A. Gailey (Athens, GA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Crux (Paperback)

I debated how many stars to give The Crux because there are two different ways of looking at it. On the one hand, this is (as the previous reviewer noted) an interesting text when viewed as part of women's history. Gilman is becoming increasingly canonized-- she was a complex and fascinating figure, and The Crux is an important part of studying her in particular and early feminism in general.

That said, I thought the book's entertainment value was slim. It is melodramatic, saccharine, and often boring. Granted, Gilman was intentionally tapping into generic conventions that were associated with women's fiction, and many of these problems result from that, but nevertheless, if you're looking for a consistently fun read, you may not find it here.

This is, though, a well-done edition of the book, and the introduction should prove interesting and useful to students and casual readers alike.