First Course: Charlotte Perkins Gilman Parthenogenesis Salad
Spinach, nasturtium salad with marigold dressing
Charlotte Perkins Gilman divorced and left her family behind, afterwards she lived at Hull House for a few months. Her main feminist treatise was that sex and domestic economics went hand in hand; for a woman to survive, she was reliant on her sexual assets to please her husband in exchange for financial support. This philosophy was the genesis of her novel, Herland. The book describes an isolated society composed entirely of women, who reproduce via parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction). The result is an ideal social order: free of war, conflict, and domination.
"The duo held harvesting and papermaking workshops and created an ad-hoc distribution center for radical feminist literature, extending the garden’s metaphor to mean the seeding or cultivation of future generations of activist artists and gardeners." --Jenni Sorkin, critic and curator
