on the place of women in society. The writings published by Gilman in The Forerunner were of sharp contrast to the texts that were available to women during the early 1900s. Women were expected to read about the appropriate etiquette assumed for them in marriage and the household. For example, the paramount journal of the early 1900s was Ladies’ Home Journal, which portrayed women as passive, focused on marriage and family issues, and was concerned with reaching the specific audience of middle class white women. Cane and Alves bring to light Gilman's goals. “Gilman’s Forerunner, on the other hand, existed to counteract popular images of women and such personal limitations on their everyday lives that the mass media promulgated.” Fighting the assumed roles of women and the representation of women in society was not a simple undertaking given the constraints placed upon women by the general public and prevailing cultural standards. A patriarchal society was rampantly dominant throughout the standing government and general population. The beliefs held by the community of a woman's place restricted a woman's access to opportunity and education, a problem which Gilman was passionately determined to change. As Gilman herself describes, “The Forerunner . . . does not fill your brain with more facts, but stirs it to new action. . . . It stands for Human Progress, and concentrates upon the Progress of Women only because their present position is the world’s stumbling block.” By publishing The Forerunner, Gilman hoped to inspire woman to take the steps towards changing the concepts of what a woman “should be” and stimulate the community to promote a commonality in the civil liberties of women. By perpetuating a diverse collection of ideas in her writings, Gilman wrote to address and effect the main issue she believed was adversely impacting the nation. Gilman believed one of the main issues faced in the society of the time period was a lack of opportunities and education, beyond motherly knowledge, afforded to women even though these opportunities were readily available to bolster the advancement of men. She discusses this matter of contention in "Our Brains and What Ails Them," published in Forerunner in 1912. Her stance that women are stunted in society is expressed in this article. She writes, “So the human brain has grown, by normal use and exercise, in the male; and been stunted, denied normal use and exercise in the