The Yellow Wallpaper [short story]

The Yellow Wallpaper is a brilliant late nineteenth century novella/short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The story is told in the first person by a woman who is apparently suffering from post-partum depression; her husband, a doctor, has rented an estate for the season and prescribed a rest cure for her "nervous illness." He dictates every detail of her existence, from choosing the room where they will sleep to forbidding her to exert herself by writing. She describes the hideous yellow wallpaper in the room, developing a fixation with it. She comes to see a woman behind the wallpaper, struggling to escape it.

The story is a perceptive portrayal of the gender roles of the time, the husband's dominance and certainty of his show more correctness, the wrongness of the treatment, and the narrator's gradual descent into madness. Coming several years earlier than The Awakening, Gilman's story treats similar themes of the limits that societal expectations place on women. The story is formally an easy read but emotionally challenging. 4.5 stars. show less

any real analysis of this would take longer than the short text itself. there is so much in here and it's all done so well. how she includes so much with so few words is a wonder.

this was written in the 1890s, so clearly women not being believed about their bodies, their selves, their minds, is an ongoing problem that we've been facing for a long, long time. the medical system still doesn't believe (or really even study) women when we say that things aren't right in our bodies. we aren't believed and we aren't trusted, and the main character in this short but powerful story faces that as well. at the same time, anyone who tries to live outside the proscribed "norms" will face a pushback that labels them sick or crazy or unwell, as we show more see so often today, too.

it's really fascinating to see her progression, as more and more of her autonomy is taken from her, into further madness. (or is it madness? it is release from shackles that were binding her?) i guess that's the really exciting question for me - do we see her, at the end, having gone raving mad, being driven that way because her doctor husband and her doctor brother weren't listening to her, weren't getting her what she needed, or do we see her having freed herself from the prison that society has created, and starting anew, having broken out? and, maybe, can it be both? show less

One of my favorite pieces of short fiction ever. I was first exposed to this story during my senior year of high school, where I just wrote it off as a creepy story. I enjoyed it, but I didn't really GET it. This 6,000 word story, written as a journal of a woman's descent into madness, is deceptively simple.

I came across it again years later, and I saw it in a different way. An extremely personal way. I related to this narrator in that I feared ending up like her. And if I'd been born in her time, I very well might have. I chose this story to be the focus of a research paper for a lit class, and studied it once again for another lit class. I am very familiar with this story and I've lost count of how many times I've read it. But every show more time I read it, I get a new feeling from it, and it chills me all over again. show less

This is a brilliant portrait of a young women's slow and painful descent into madness, as she is being gently nudged along by her husband's suffocating condescension, masqueraded as "love". He was, after all, a physician, so he knew what best she needed to cure herself of the "melancholy" to which she succumbed after the birth of their son. Yes, he knew best.

Physician, heal thyself!

This classic story is available online all over the internet, and can also be found here

Such a disturbing short story... chronicling a woman’s descent into madness while being forced to convalesce for her ‘nervousness’ by her all-knowing physician husband. So creepy and dark, but gorgeous prose. Her use of the word ‘creep’ towards the end gives me the heebie-jeebies.

‘It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please!’ 😱

In a Nutshell: A short story much beyond its time. A quick read that won’t leave you quickly.

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Story Synopsis:

The unnamed narrator is living in a new rental colonial house, along with her husband (a physician), her baby, and her sister-in-law. After her husband diagnoses her with a “temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency”, he asks her to be confined to her room and rest without doing any work. However, the chosen room is an old nursery, because of which it has barred windows and a bright yellow wallpaper. The narrator hates the wallpaper because of its shifting patterns that seem to hint at a woman creeping in the design. With nothing else to invest her time in, she grows more and

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more obsessed with the wallpaper, until her mania crosses a dangerous boundary.
Written in the first person of the narrator, the story comes to us through her journal entries.

This classic short story won’t take you more than 30 minutes to read, but it encapsulates such brilliant themes that you will get far more to ponder upon. It incorporates intense topics such as feminism, post-partum depression, and women’s subservience to men without being pretentious in its approach. It also highlights the importance of open communication from both parties in marital relationships, and the dangers of hearing only the words without listening to what is said between the lines.

Keep in mind that this story was first published in 1892 in ‘The New England Magazine’. I am sure it would have been revolutionary at that time for a woman writer to explore such radical themes.

The story details the woman’s descent into madness, but doesn’t provide any direct explanation. As such, it lends itself wonderfully to a discussion. Was the woman merely suffering from post-partum depression? Was her psychosis a result of her being confined to her room? Did the room exacerbate her illness, or did her illness exaggerate the dreariness of the wallpaper? Was a subconscious part of her revolting at her feelings not being taken into consideration by her husband? The wallpaper of those days used to contain arsenic; did this factor also have a role to play in her mental degradation?

It’s easy to point fingers at her husband as the villain of her life, but again, his actual role is subject to interpretation. Was he ‘gaslighting’ his wife? Was he genuinely concerned for her and just following the typical medical advice of that era for hysteria – rest until recuperation? Did he love her, or was he trying to get rid of her? Is he an exception or a typical specimen of his times?

The plot itself comes to us only through the journal entries of a woman whose mind had spiralled into chaos. Can the journal be considered an accurate representation of the truth? Is the story just indicative of the social mores in 1892? How much of it is relevant even today? When a person gaslights someone without being aware of it, is he/she to be blamed, or the society?

So many questions; no easy answers.

The abrupt ending doesn’t help us gain any solutions. I was caught so unawares by that ending that I went back to the start and read the whole story again.

To a certain extent, this story reminded me of Sylvia Plath’s ‘The Bell Jar’. In both cases, we see the narrator going down a dangerous path of self-destruction but can’t do anything except read helplessly and in growing horror. Both stories end on a morbid note that intensifies their effect.

Another ironic coincidence is that both stories are based on their authors’ actual experiences and are thus semi-autobiographical. In 1884, at the age of 25, Gilman bore her only child. Soon after the birth, she suffered from a serious bout of what today would be diagnosed as post-partum depression. She opted for the “Rest Cure”, and after a month, was sent home with the prescription to live as domestically as possible, keep her child with her at all times, lie down for one hour after each meal, and to never touch a pen, brush, or pencil for the rest of her life. Her depression returned, and soon after coming home Gilman separated from her husband of four years—such separation being a rare event in the 19th century. As she later remarked, “It was not a choice between going and staying, but between going, sane, and staying, insane.” (Information courtesy https://connecticuthistory.org/charlotte-perkins-gilman/)

A much-recommended read to all classic short lovers. Simultaneously weird and wonderful.

4 stars.

As this story is in the public domain, you can read it free of cost on various sites online. I read it using the below link:
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/theliteratureofprescription/exhibitionAssets/...

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I would have sworn I’d read this before, in college, I suppose—I’ve long been familiar with the basic contour and even a lot of the details. But reading it now, either there’s a lot I’ve forgotten, or (more likely) I never did read it in the first place. In any case, knowing what was happening before it happened didn’t dull the impact at all. It’s a powerfully written story, which doesn’t lean on surprise or misdirection for its effect.

The writing, of course, is masterful. From the very beginning, the narrator is a complex mixture—confiding, searching, nearly pleading, a bit shaky, and at the same time determined. As she shifts throughout the story—sometimes perceptibly, sometimes less so—you really tend to go show more right along with her. It’s harder to imagine empathizing so strongly with her husband, the supposed voice of reason and normalcy.There’s an unnerving malignancy underlying his calm certainty, and you just know that he isn’t even aware of it himself. show less