The Yellow Wallpaper

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Overview

The Yellow Wallpaper 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 story is written 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. 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.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781617202063
Publisher:	Wilder Publications
Publication date:	01/29/2011
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	38
Sales rank:	28,789
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.09(d)

About the Author

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) was an American author, poet, lecturer and feminist. Experiencing depression and an inability to adjust to her life as a cloistered wife in American society of the late 19th century, she was prescribed a ‘rest cure’ which completely idled her for months and nearly drove her mad. This experience inspired her most highly regarded work, The Yellow Wallpaper, but Gilman went on to write several other noted books, including Women and Economics and the feminist utopian novel, Herland, and lectured widely on topics of social concern. Her work helped set the foundation of feminism and grass roots political activism at the dawn of the 20th century.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Note on the Text
Select Bibliography
A Chronology of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Yellow Wall-Paper (1890)
That Rare Jewel (1890)
The Unexpected (1890)
Circumstances Alter Cases (1890)
The Giant Wistaria (1891)
An Extinct Angel (1891)
The Rocking-Chair (1893)
Deserted (1893)
An Elopement (1893)
Through This (1893)
The Misleading of Pendleton Oaks (1894)
A Day's Berryin' (1894)
Five Girls (1894)
One Way Out (1894)
An Unpatented Process (1895)
An Unnatural Mother (1895)
Three Thanksgivings (1909)
According to Solomon (1909)
The Cottagette (1910)
The Widow's Might (1911)
The Jumping-Off Place (1911)
In Two Houses (1911)
Turned (1911)
Making a Change (1911)
Mrs Elder's Idea (1912)
Their House (1912)
Her Beauty (1913)
Mrs Hines's Money (1913)
Bee Wise (1913)
A Council of War (1913)
Fulfilment (1914)
A Partnership (1914)
If I Were a Man (1914)
Mr Peebles's Heart (1914)
Mrs Merrill's Duties (1915)
Girls and Land (1915)
Dr Clair's Place (1915)
A Surplus Woman (1916)
Joan's Defender (1916)

Appendix A     Impress 'Story Studies'
Appendix B     'Why I Wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper"?'

Editorial Reviews

Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" was first published in 1892; since its republication in 1973, it has entered the canon of American literature and generated extensive critical commentary. This edition of the story is accompanied by a generous selection of cultural and historical documents, among them: excerpts from 19th- century advice manuals for young women and mothers; medical texts discussing the nature of women's sexuality; social reform literature concerning women's rights, the working classes, and immigration; and excerpts from periodicals, diaries, and writers' notebooks. Distributed by St. Martin's Press. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

Narrator Beata Pozniak’s captivating accent and likable style are ideal for this seminal feminist short story (1892). An unnamed woman is suffering from postnatal “temporary nervous depression,” according to her husband, a doctor, who believes he knows what’s best for her: strict isolation and bed rest. Pozniak faultlessly delivers journal entries that express the woman’s longing to see her baby and to go outside. She is kept in a room with yellow wallpaper, whose eerie designs eventually appear to come alive. Impressive sound effects—for example, the wallpaper’s movements and sounds, as well as the woman’s breathing—augment Pozniak’s voice as it slides into notes of terror. Those elements and a riveting conclusion demonstrate that audiobooks can be as horrifying as anything on the screen. S.G.B. © AudioFile 2021, Portland, Maine

DECEMBER 2021 - AudioFile