The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Yellow Wallpaper
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Pub. Date: 1892
Genre: Fiction - Short Story
30pp

Synopsis from Wikipedia.com:
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Read it for yourself here

Why I Picked It:
It's on the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I remember this story from a literature class in college, and have never forgotten it. The analogy of the complicated, aggitated wallpaper and the woman suffering from mental illness is written in such a way that you won't easily leave the idea alone. It's sort of like the first time I read, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson. I don't remember verbatim a lot of the things I read when I was younger, but these two stories, I haven't been able to emotionally let go.

My Review:
LOVED reading this story again. Written as a series of journal entries, the story is of a woman suffering from "a temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency" as diagnosed by her physician husband, John, "practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures." They have leased a colonial estate for the summer so that the rest and fresh air could help her to recover. The room she spends her time in has barred windows and with nothing to do, she becomes obsessed with the pattern and color of the room's wallpaper. "It is the strangest yellow, that wall-paper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw — not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things. But there is something else about that paper — the smell! ... The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper! A yellow smell."

The story, I discovered, is written from the author's own experiences with mental illness during the late 1800s. From a modern day perspective, since we have learned that the main character has recently given birth to a child, it resembles more of a post-partum depression that escalates through improper treatment into resigned madness. Feminists have had a field day with this story as it uses many stereotypes and dismisses the woman's suggestions for her recovery as the rantings of an irrational being. Also, there is the matter of such an unequal marital relationship - the husband all but treating her as a baby, poo-pooing her when she makes suggestions for her care.

I don't want to reveal anything that would give away or diminish the power of the story. It remains one of my favorite short stories, and I thoroughly enjoyed revisiting it.