The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Writings {Bantam Classics}

I knew Gilman’s name chiefly from Herland, an early novel about a feminist utopia, which I own in the Women’s Press SF edition but have yet to read. ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is perhaps her best known piece of short fiction. The narrator and her husband move into an old house, and the narrator becomes obsessed by the wallpaper in an attic room. She is convinced there is someone hidden inside the wallpaper who is desperate to escape and… well, it’s very atmospheric. The other stories, such as ‘If I Were a Man’ or ‘Turned’, are of their time, except for their overt feminist sensibilities. I’ve read early genre fiction by women writers, like Francis Stevens, Agatha Christie, Leslie F Stone, and, of course, CL Moore… show more but none them seemed to my mind to have as strong a female point of view as the stories in Gilman’s collection. The book also included an except from Herland, and a couple of excerpts from some of Gilman’s non-ficiton writing. I found the book in a charity shop a while ago, and bought it because I knew the name. But now I’m really glad I own a copy of it. show less

This is really a novella. It's only about 40 pages, probably not even that long, and only took me an hour or so to read.

It was an interesting and thought provoking book about a woman's descent into madness. I thought it was very well written, quite sinister in tone and tragic really. I could certainly relate to some extent on how the woman thinks there is nothing wrong with her, but everybody else can see that things are not right.

The Yellow Wallpaper is a 19th-century semi-autobiographical tale of a woman's descent into madness. After suffering from what we now call post-partum depression and what was then called "melancholy" or "melancholia," Charlotte Perkins Gilman's husband took her to see an up-and-coming specialist on nervous diseases who had recently invented "The Rest Cure." The rest cure required the patient to spend several weeks or months shut away from family and friends in a quiet, darkened room, making sure she didn't exert herself with any physical or mental pursuits. Additionally, it was suggested that she eat bland food and refrain from using her hands at all. Most of her time was to be spent lying quietly in bed.

Gilman found that rather than show more curing her of her depression, the treatment severely worsened it. Eventually she decided that the best thing for her was to reengage in normal activity. This successfully cured her condition, and she decided to write the story, embellished with a few exaggerations, to show the dangers of this kind of treatment. Besides being an enthralling read, The Yellow Wallpaper serves as an important social commentary on women, their feelings and emotions, and their place in 19th-century America. show less

first off, you must read The Yellow Wallpaper. it's only 20 pages and it's online here (http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/wallpaper.html), very accessible. and it's about (a probably irretrievable) descent into madness. what more could you want?

I find myself comparing it to The Bell Jar. it's much shorter and even more swift and sure than The Bell Jar. also, TBJ ends with the character at least temporarily overcoming the problem (which might or might not be levenned out by the fact that everyone knows it's an autobiographical work and that Sylvia Plath did attempt suicide again, that time succeeding) while there is probably very little chance that the character in The Yellow Wallpaper, or the multiple characters that show more she becomes, ever manages to put things together again.

I like The Bell Jar, but I love The Yellow Wallpaper.

also I find myself comparing TYW to Fight Club. brill, that movie. primarily because it also handles the fracturing of the main character as sublty as the character himself perceives it. so, watch Fight Club, read The Yellow Wallpaper.

The Yellow Wallpaper = 5

ok. um. the other stories in the book are meant to be didactic pieces; ideas presented in the most palatable form. the utopian novel Herland is not meant to be 100% realistic (so don't start about the virgin births). it's just an avenue to display ideas. the other writings (treatises) including Women and Economics and Our Androcentric Culture are, basically, revolutionary feminism... or what was considered revolutionary feminism in the 1890s.

it's worth paying attention to the fact she wasn't necessarily pushing political emanicpation or sexual emacipation for women but rather economical emancipation. she makes very good sense and many of the changes that have come about between now and then in this quarter have been just that---women are more free to work and live and have families outside the then-traditional home; women are no longer absolutely dependent on their fathers/brothers/husbands for money and upkeep; women are outgrowing their role as manipulative seducers of men and as ravenous consumers of ridiculous petty pretty things such as feathered hats... although this has a long long way to go still. I rather agree with her on the old male-female economic relationship, in all ways, esp as encouraging materialism. show less

This short story is a psychologically rich description of a woman's physical and mental confinement. An astounding work of fiction, chilling in many ways.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a great feminist thinker, and author of many books on social architecture, as well as other fiction and non-fiction.

Five stars for The Yellow Wallpaper.
Three for her other fiction except Herland.
Two stars for Herland, the social feminist version of Ayn Rand (building a world just for your social ideas doesn’t work, especially when it’s not particularly well written).
One star for the non-fiction, which is full of fallacies and sophistry.

a must read for anybody who doesn't like being locked in a room and told to "rest."