Imagine seeking help for severe depression and being ordered never to touch a pen, pencil or paintbrush again. That was the rest cure prescribed to Charlotte Perkins Gilman by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell after the birth of her daughter, and it nearly killed her. This episode traces a life of stark contrasts, from a Hartford childhood in which her mother showed affection only when she believed Charlotte was asleep and banned fiction outright, to a father from the famous Beecher family who sent rigorous reading lists instead of hugs.

We follow her intense relationship with Martha Luther, the marriage to Charles Walter Stetson that felt like a psychological time bomb, and the rebellion that produced The Yellow Wallpaper, a copy of which she sent directly to the doctor who had confined her. Then the unconventional divorce in which she supported her ...