Just a couple of days ago I read The Giant Wistaria by feminist author Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. A deeply heartbreaking story, comparable to The Old Nurse’s Story by Elizabeth Gaskell.

The Giant Wistaria offers many valuable insights. Among them, one strikes me as particularly contemporary: despite all our lightness and everyday distractions, we should never forget how easily tragedy can unfold just a few rooms away from us, and how much of our fortune depends on where and when we are born.

(photo by commons.wikimedia.org/w…