The yellow wall-paper

62 pages

English language

Published 1996 by The Feminist Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-55861-158-0
OCLC Number:: 34926888

(1 review)

In the decades since the long-lost text of "The Yellow Wall-Paper" was rediscovered and reprinted by The Feminist Press, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's classic narrative of confinement and madness has become essential to the canon of North American literature.

First published in 1892, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" is written as the secret journal of a woman who, failing to relish the joys of marriage and motherhood, is sentenced to a country rest cure to remedy her "nervous condition" - which is actually postpartum depression. Though she longs to write, her husband and doctor forbid it, prescribing instead complete passivity.

Locked in her bedroom, the heroine creates a reality of her own beyond the hypnotic pattern of the faded yellow wallpaper - a pattern that has come to symbolize her own imprisonment. Narrated with superb psychological and dramatic precision, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" stands out not only for the imaginative authenticity with which it …

In the decades since the long-lost text of "The Yellow Wall-Paper" was rediscovered and reprinted by The Feminist Press, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's classic narrative of confinement and madness has become essential to the canon of North American literature.

First published in 1892, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" is written as the secret journal of a woman who, failing to relish the joys of marriage and motherhood, is sentenced to a country rest cure to remedy her "nervous condition" - which is actually postpartum depression. Though she longs to write, her husband and doctor forbid it, prescribing instead complete passivity.

Locked in her bedroom, the heroine creates a reality of her own beyond the hypnotic pattern of the faded yellow wallpaper - a pattern that has come to symbolize her own imprisonment. Narrated with superb psychological and dramatic precision, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" stands out not only for the imaginative authenticity with which it depicts one woman's descent into insanity, but also for the power of its testimony to the importance of freedom and self-empowerment for women.

31 editions

nicknicknicknick@bookwyrm.social reviewed The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

4 stars

1) "It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity–but that would be asking too much of fate! Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it."

2) "John is a physician, and PERHAPS–(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)–PERHAPS that is one reason I do not get well faster."

3) "It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls. The paint …

1) "It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity–but that would be asking too much of fate! Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it."

2) "John is a physician, and PERHAPS–(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)–PERHAPS that is one reason I do not get well faster."

3) "It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore. It was nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls. The paint and paper look as if a boys' school had used it. It is stripped off–the paper–in great patches all around the head of my bed, about as far as I can reach, and in a great place on the other side of the room low down. I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin. It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide–plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions. The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight."

4) "There is one end of the room where it is almost intact, and there, when the crosslights fade and the low sun shines directly upon it, I can almost fancy radiation after all,–the interminable grotesques seem to form around a common centre and rush off in headlong plunges of equal distraction. It makes me tired to follow it. I will take a nap I guess. I don't know why I should write this. I don't want to."

5) "There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will."

Subjects

Married women -- Fiction
Mentally ill women -- Fiction
Sex role -- Fiction