Resolved

To keep my health!

To do my work!

To live!

To see to it I grow and gain and give!

Never to look behind me for an hour!

To wait in weakness, and to walk in power;

But always fronting onward toward the light,

Always and always facing toward the right.

Robbed, starved, defeated, failed, wide astray—

On with what strength I have!

Back to the way!

-       Charlotte Perkins Stetson[1]

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[1] Charlotte Anna Perkins was born in 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut to Frederic Beecher and Mary Wescott Perkins. During her infancy, her father abandoned the family, leaving them in poverty. Her mother was unable to support the family on her own; they often spent time with Charlotte’s aunts on her father’s side of the family: Isabella Beecher Hooker, a suffragist; Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author; and Catharine Beecher, a feminist. Charlotte taught herself to read at the age of five. As she grew, she became a frequenter of libraries, studying on her own.  Much of Charlotte’s youth was spent in Providence, Rhode Island. She was a self-described tomboy. She had only the spottiest formative education, attending seven different schools before she was fifteen, but only completing four years of study in that time. At eighteen she enrolled at the Rhode Island School of Design, supporting herself as an artist of trade cards. She also became a tutor, and encouraged others to expand their artistic creativity.

In 1884, Charlotte she married the artist Charles Walter Stetson. Their only child, Katharine Beecher Stetson, was born the following year. Charlotte suffered a serious bout of post-partum depression in the months after Katharine’s birth. In 1888, she separated from Charles—a move she felt necessary for the her mental health. Following the separation, she moved with her daughter to Pasadena, California where she became active in several feminist and reformist organizations. When the divorce was final, in 1894, Charlotte sent Katherine east to live with her ex-husband and his second wife.

Charlotte’s mother died in 1895, and she decided to move back east. When she arrived, she looked up Houghton Gilman, her first cousin, a Wall Street attorney. They had not seen eachother in fifteen years. They soon began to date. They married in 1900, and spent the next 22 years living in New York City. In 1922 them moved to Houghton’s old homestead in Norwich, Connecticut. In 1932 she was diagnosed with uncurable breast cancer. In 1934, Houghton died suddenly, and Charlotte moved back to California, where her daughter resided. In the grip of cancer, and perhaps ironically, given the verse quoted above (which from the citation dates to her first marriage) she committed suicide in 1935.  (Source: Wikipedia)