An Obstacle

I was climbing up a mountain-path

With many things to do,

Important business of my own,

And other people’s too,

When I ran against a Prejudice

That quite cut off my view.

So I spoke to him politely,

For he was huge and high,

And begged that he would move a bit

And let me travel by.

He smiled, but as for moving! –

He didn’t even try.

And then I begged him on my knees;

I might be kneeling still

If so I hoped to move that mass

Of obdurate ill-will –

As well invite the monument

To vacate Bunker Hill!!

So I sat before him helpless,

In an ecstasy of woe –

The mountain mists were rising fast,

The sun was sinking slow –

When a sudden inspiration came,

As sudden winds do blow.

I took my hat, I took my stick,

My load I settled fair,

I approached that awful incubus

With an absent-minded air –

And I walked directly through him,

As if he wasn’t there!

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman also wrote The Yellow Wallpaper – a semi-autobiographical account of her struggle with postpartum psychosis. She was an advocate for the suffragist movement and also wrote non-fiction, most notably, The Home: Its work and influence, an expansion on her previous work, published in 1898, Women and Economics: A study of the economic relation between women and men as a factor in social evolution.