PROFESSOR TO DISCUSS WOMEN'S MOVEMENT TUDSDAY NIGHT HERE

Mary Hill, a professor of history at Bucknell University and an American Council on Education Fellow, has depicted the historical struggle and success of the women's movement through a perspective of one woman's public and private life in the 19th century.

Hill will give an illustrated talk Tuesday on "A Woman's Search for Self: The Life and Works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman," for the Liberal Arts Distinguished Scholar Lecture at Southeast Missouri State University. The event will be held in the University Center Ballroom at 7:30 p.m.

"The appraisal of the richness and power of women's history comes from seeing the whole perspective ... that is the difficulties that women such as Gilman lived through, and also the richness of their achievements," Hill said.

The three-part lecture will include excerpts from two of Hill's books about Gilman and a third on Gilman's first husband, 19th-century American artist Charles Walter Stetson.

A panoramic view of Gilman's life will include a biographical overview through private diaries, letters and sketches of Gilman and other women by Stetson. The lecture will also provide an evaluation of her public work, theories, lectures and numerous published books of her activities.

"Stetson's paintings and other artists of that time and before showed what man wanted to make woman into," Hill said. "That created an internal conflict for women such as Gilman, who believed in the right for women to work and gain economic independence."

In the final segment, Hill will survey the conflict in Gilman's life in response to the split the 19th-century feminist experienced between her public and private life. Although Gilman's political theories reflected a confident and independent demeanor, Hill said, her diaries revealed her rigorous and at times tormented struggle with a woman's perceived place in society.

"It is important to learn the difficulties these women faced, but it is also important to learn how they managed to accomplish. Women can gain a sense of pride from Gilman's history. These women struggled within and with society so we can have what we do today.

"From Gilman's personal history, we also see that searching for who we are can be exciting," Hill said.

Hill's work has been reviewed in the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, the Journal of American History and elsewhere.