Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
I want to read the book!
All characters reduced
The Crux - cover

The Crux

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Publisher: Gothic World Literature Editions

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

"In place of happy love, lonely pain. In place of motherhood, disease. Misery and shame, child. Medicine and surgery, and never any possibility of any child for me."
First published in her magazine The Forerunner, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Crux is an emotive tale on the nuances of female independence, social expectation and love in early 20th century America.
Following an all-female group who move west to open a boarding house for men, The Crux focuses on the experience of Vivian ― and her desire for the undesirable. Deeply in love with Morton, a charismatic young man infected with both syphilis and gonorrhoea, Vivian's expected journey through her 'marriage' years is abruptly turned upside down.
Torn by her personal intuition, the advice provided by her female companions and the knowledge that Morton will never give her healthy children, Vivian is faced with a permanent choice ― to forfeit love for the benefit of future generations.
Balancing female and male perspectives on illness, personal preservation and nationalism, The Crux tracks Vivian's path through heart break, emotional development and female camaraderie.
As an allegory for Gilman's own branch of utopian feminism, The Crux is a story of sacrifice and partnership deliberation within the framework of 20th century disease hysteria, eugenic ideology and developing modernism.
Often omitted from her writing canon, The Crux is an integral aspect to understanding not only Gilman's own writing ― but the history of feminism as a whole.
"The Crux is essentially a seminar in biological, feminine and social correctness. As stated in the original Forerunner publication, the novel was intended for a specific set of people - young and impressionable women primarily, followed by men and anyone else willing to listen. The Crux, in its barebones, is a nationalist parable for all of America to heed."
from Ambrose Kelly's new introduction to The Crux
* * *
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860 – 1935) was an American humanist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform. She was a utopian feminist and served as a role model for future generations of feminists because of her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle.
Available since: 06/18/2021.
Print length: 236 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk The - A Sherlock Holmes Adventure (Unabridged) - cover

    Adventure of the Stockbroker's...

    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    "The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk" is one of the 56 short Sherlock Holmes stories written by British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is the fourth of the twelve collected in The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes in most British editions of the canon, and third of eleven in most American ones (owing to the omission of the "scandalous" "Adventure of the Cardboard Box"). The story was first published in Strand Magazine in March 1893. A young clerk, Hall Pycroft, consults Holmes with his suspicions concerning a company that has offered him a very well-paid job. Holmes, Watson and Pycroft travel by train to Birmingham, where the job is initially to be based, and Pycroft explains that he was recently made redundant from a stockbroking house. He eventually secured a new post with another stockbrokers, Mawson and Williams, in Lombard Street in the City. Before taking up the job, he was approached by Arthur Pinner, who offered him a managership with a newly established hardware distribution company, to be based in France.
    Show book
  • Oedipus Rex (unabridged) - cover

    Oedipus Rex (unabridged)

    Sophocles

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    Oedipus Rex, is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that was first performed around 429 BC. To the ancient Greeks, the title was simply Oedipus, as it is referred to by Aristotle in the Poetics. It is thought to have been renamed Oedipus Tyrannus to distinguish it from another of Sophocles' plays, Oedipus at Colonus. This drama is an absolute must-hear classic that has been enjoyed for centuries.Breakfast Time Media LLC strives to provide you with the best possible listening experience.  We work with only the most talented of narrators.  We use a computer-assisted dynamic-leveling process to ensure audio stays within an optimal listening range. Noise-gate technology is used in all books to eliminate all background and room noise disturbances for your enjoyment of the audiobook.  We are dedicated to providing you with the best possible audio experience at the best possible price.
    Show book
  • The Death of Ivan Ilyich - cover

    The Death of Ivan Ilyich

    Leo Tolstoy

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    Hailed as one of the world's supreme masterpieces on the subject of death and dying, The Death of Ivan Ilyich is the story of a worldly careerist, a high court judge who has never given the inevitability of his death so much as a passing thought. But one day death announces itself to him, and to his shocked surprise he is brought face to face with his own mortality. How, Tolstoy asks, does an unreflective man confront his one and only moment of truth? A thoroughly absorbing and, at times, terrifying glimpse into the abyss of death, it is also a strong testament to the possibility of finding spiritual salvation.
    Show book
  • Count of Monte Cristo The - Volume 4 (Unabridged) - cover

    Count of Monte Cristo The -...

    Alexandre Dumas

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas' epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it was first serialized in the 1840s.VOLUME 4: Two days after, a considerable crowd was assembled, towards ten o'clock in the morning, around the door of M. de Villefort's house, and a long file of mourning-coaches and private carriages extended along the Faubourg Saint-Honoré and the Rue de la Pépinière.
    Show book
  • Aepyornis Island - cover

    Aepyornis Island

    H. G. Wells

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    Herbert George Wells (1866 – 1946) was a prolific English witer, now best remembered for his science fiction novels, and is often credited as being the father of science fiction."Aepyornis Island" is the strange tale of a naturalist who find himself adrift in a canoe in the Indian Ocean, with three mysterious rare giant eggs which he has collected. He knows they are the eggs of the Aepyornis - a bird which has been extinct for hundreds of years. He is amazed when hunger forces him to try one of the eggs, to find that it is fresh. When he opens the second egg several days later, he is horrified to find a still live embryo inside it. Before he is forced to eat the third and final egg, his canoe is cast up on a deserted atoll, where he finds fresh water and plenty of fish in the lagoon. Then the final egg hatches and the strangest part of the adventure begins.
    Show book
  • The Debt - cover

    The Debt

    Edith Wharton

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0 
    Edith Wharton (1862-1937) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist and short story writer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928, and 1930.The Debt is the story of the relationship between an eminent Professor of Biology and a young but highly talented student. The great Professor Landfear adopts the bright but socially awkward Galen Dredge as his protegé and future successor, preferring him even over his own son Archie.But when Dredge succeeds to the Landfear Chair of Evolution and becomes Director of the state-of-the-art Landfear Laboratory after his patron's death, he embarks on a series of lectures which seem to be designed to demolish Landfear's life's work. In the face of such treachery and ingratitude, Archie Landfear resolves to confront Dredge.
    Show book