When I was halfway through my first pregnancy, a well-meaning friend offered a solution to the fact our child would be sleeping in the room I had always worked in. “Just put a desk at the bottom of the stairs,” she said. I pointed out that there wasn’t a lot of room, that it would be a bit chaotic, writing in the middle of a passageway. “Oh, well, you won’t write when you have a baby anyway,” she replied. “You won’t need a desk.”

I thought of this when I read the instructions given to Victorian author Charlotte Perkins Gilman after she was referred to a doctor for what academics have since diagnosed as postpartum depression. “Live as domestic a life as possible… Have your child with you all the time… Have but two hours intellectual life a day. And never touch pen, brush or pencil as long

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