She was quite tired enough to cry after several nights of broken rest and days of constant discomfort and irritation; but a sense of rising anger kept the tears back.
"Of course I love him!" she said to herself aloud but softly, remembering the baby, "And no doubt he loves me! I'm glad to be his wife! I'm glad to be a mother to his child! I'm glad I married him! But—this is not what he offered! And it's not what I undertook! He hasn't had to change his business!"
She marched up and down the scant space, and then stopped short and laughed drily, continuing her smothered soliloquy.
"'Do you love me?' they ask, and, 'I will make you happy!' they say; and you get married—and after that it's Housework!"
"They don't say, 'Will you be my Cook?' 'Will you be my Chamber maid?' 'Will you give up a good clean well-paid business that you love—that has big hope and power and beauty in it—and come and keep house for me?'"
"Love him? I'd be in Paris this minute if I didn't! What has 'love' to do with dust and grease and flies!"

First published in 1910, "What Diantha Did" is a novel about a young woman whose fiance can't afford to marry her because his father died unexpectedly. Although his goal in life was to be a scientist, his father died unexpectedly and he had to take over the family grocery and support his mother and four sisters until business picks up and his sisters get married. Diantha see can't why her a family of five women needs to keep two servants when they could easily manage the house themselves, or why the older daughters can't get jobs to help with the family finances, but her fiance doesn't see it that way, so Diantha leaves home intending to set up a business supplying domestic workers to work on an hourly basis rather than as live-in servants, as her own experience of housekeeping has taught her all the necessary skills. In her new town she soon meets a wealthy widow who is keen to support her and her first client is a female architect who is desperate to get away from the housework she detests and is no good at, and back to the work she loves.

A really interesting feminist novel, making clear the true value of all the work an Edwardian woman did in the home, and showing how women working and not being slaves to their houses could have benefits for men as well as women. ( )

What Diantha Did is a very progressive novel for having been published in 1909.

The main concepts in this book are women moving away from the home to work, a woman starting her own business, and housework moving away from being simply a wife’s job. Diantha is a 21 year old woman who moves away from her betrothed with the idea of creating a domestic services business to create a solution to the “servant problem.” All of the women written in this story are enterprising and capable, but are often held back by their situations in the home. With Diantha’s ideals to rescue them, they all grow into their own and are able to live independently without the burden of having to live under the traditional style of being housewives or mistresses of the house. Diantha herself undergoes trouble with the men and the old fashioned women in her life being unable to accept her enterprising ideals.

This book provides a unique look at a very forward thinking author, who in the early 1900s is thinking about women working away from the home and taking on a professional career. Something mostly unthinkable in those days, but is so common to us 100 years later. Her simple ideas expressed through her protagonist are presented like a form of utopia.

I would highly recommend reading this story, it is well written, at times funny and at times sad. It is well thought out and reads rather easily. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a revolutionary and a visionary for a female in her time. ( )