Description:

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the nineteenth century toward women's physical and mental health. The story also has been classified as Gothic fiction and horror fiction. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is written in epistolary style, specifically as a collection of first person journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband has confined her to the upstairs bedroom of a house that he has rented for the summer. She is forbidden from working, and has to hide her journal entries from him, so that she can recuperate from what he calls a "temporary nervous depression;a slight hysterical tendency," a diagnosis common to women in that period. Her husband controls her access to the rest of the house. A key locks the door. The story depicts the effect of confinement on the narrator's mental health, and her descent into psychosis. With nothing to stimulate her, she becomes obsessed by the pattern and color of the 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." In the end, she imagines that there are women creeping around behind the patterns of the wallpaper, and comes to believe that she is one of them. She locks herself in the room, now the only place where she feels safe, refusing to leave when the summer rental is up. "For outside you have to creep on the ground, and everything is green instead of yellow. But here I can creep smoothly on the floor, and my shoulder just fits in that long smooch around the wall, so I cannot lose my way."

Review

The unnamed narrator and her doctor husband, John, live in "a colonial mansion, a hereditary estate..." She believes the house is haunted. "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that." She believes she is ill but her husband, and her brother, also a physician, say it is only "temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency..." They insist on "phosphates or phosphites - whichever it is - and tonics" and absolutely forbid work until she is well again. She believes "Personally...that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. Personally, I disagree with their ideas. But what is one to do? I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal - having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition." She is confined to rest in a room she hates with wallpaper she finds hideously ugly: "The color is repellent, almost revolting: a smoldering unclean yellow... dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others." It is in this room that she writes her secret journal that is this story. She struggles to believe in her husband and brother's "kindness" and "care" while, with terrifying starkness, she narrates her journey into madness. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women ; review by Jesse Larsen

From AudioFile

In 1892 an unnamed woman passes the slow days of summer writing down her innermost thoughts while convalescing. Her observations focus on the strange effects of the peeling, fading, yellow wallpaper in her bedroom. The Spencer Library has created a unique audio experience in this chilling tale with profound psychological and moral implications. Claudette Sutherland gives a remarkable performance. Her subtly expressive voice is so skillfully recorded that her soft intakes of breath have a desperate life of their own. The haunting beauty of Carol Nethen's original score can momentarily distract, but it supports more than it interferes, a tribute both to the composer and to the excellence of the recording standards. The listener is rewarded with a fully realized dramatic performance with a strong musical presence. C.T. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About the Author

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) was a prominent American sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform. She was a utopian feminist during a time when her accomplishments were exceptional for women, and she served as a role model for future generations of feminists because of her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle. Her best remembered work today is her semi-autobiographical short story The Yellow Wallpaper which she wrote after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis.