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The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was America's leading feminist intellectual of the early twentieth century.The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories makes available the fullest selection ever printed of her short fiction, featuring the pioneering feminist masterpiece of the title, her stories contemporary withThe Yellow Wallpaper, the fiction from her neglected California period (1890-95), and her later explorations of "the woman of fifty." Together, these impressive works throw new light on Gilman as a writer of fiction.
384 pages, Unknown Binding
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About the author
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
1,085 books2,293 followersCharlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935), also known as Charlotte Perkins Stetson, 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 post-partum depression.
She was the daughter of Frederic B. Perkins.
She was the daughter of Frederic B. Perkins.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 25, 2023
I had read “The Yellow Wall-Paper” in college but this was my first exposure to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s other stories. “The Yellow Wall-Paper” is deservedly her most famous fictional work, but other early stories exhibit similar talents—a propensity for allowing characters to betray their hypocrisies through their own words, a gift for establishing the complex dynamics of a social group within a few pages. The later stories have some historical but no real literary interest: they are didactic little pieces intended to highlight the potential of feminism, mostly played out through the creation by upper-middle-class women of mini-utopias.
So, “The Yellow Wall-Paper”: a first-person narrator, not named, is writing secretly in her journal while confined to a large room, once a nursery or playroom, in a country house. Her loving (perhaps) husband, a physician, has brought her there for a rest cure, along with the husband’s sister who is acting as aide or perhaps jailer. The narrator becomes obsessed with the pattern of the wallpaper in the room and starts to weave fantasies about it, fantasies that tell us more about her state of mind than about the room itself. Everything is slippery in this story—relationships, external reality, the distinction between self and other. The reader is trapped in that room as the narrator becomes less and less reliable and her mental state disintegrates, both in the usual sense of disintegration and its more usual sense of dis-integration. What is real and what is mental illness? We can’t be entirely certain.
For the rest of the stories (there are 39 and I don’t propose to discuss them all), a few stood out for me.
• “That Rare Jewel” (1980) deftly lays out the perils of gender stereotyping through a marriage proposal as narrated in alternation by the young man and woman in question.
• “An Unnatural Mother” (1895) shows us how cruel people in a homogeneous society can be toward difference, as gossips condemn a woman who has died saving everybody in town simply because she doesn’t follow their norms, which are revealed through their own words to be internally inconsistent.
• “Through This” (1893) lays out in a first-person, moment-by-moment account how the myriad details a woman working in the home has to attend to over the course of a day can stifle any wider thought or ambition, leaving her mired in the ordinary.
• “An Extinct Angel” (1891) gleefully shreds the “angel of the hearth” myth that dominated expectations of female behavior through much of the nineteenth century.
• A later story, “A Council of War” (1913), is interesting for the on-the-ground view it gives of the radical branch of the women’s suffrage movement.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman led an extraordinary life for a woman of her era, starting with being raised partly by the activist Beecher sisters and moving through two marriages and three same-sex loves while coping with bouts of major depression. She had little formal education but clearly a very active mind that had little patience for the hypocrisies and lies of society, engineered to favor men over women. She was an important thought leader in feminism, women’s suffrage, and the labor movement who wrote and lectured extensively. Like many such women in her day, she had her blind spots, focusing almost exclusively on white, educated middle-class women and their aristocratic angel patrons. But the radical dreaming of such people created many of the movements that have dramatically expanded human rights in the twentieth century and beyond.
So, “The Yellow Wall-Paper”: a first-person narrator, not named, is writing secretly in her journal while confined to a large room, once a nursery or playroom, in a country house. Her loving (perhaps) husband, a physician, has brought her there for a rest cure, along with the husband’s sister who is acting as aide or perhaps jailer. The narrator becomes obsessed with the pattern of the wallpaper in the room and starts to weave fantasies about it, fantasies that tell us more about her state of mind than about the room itself. Everything is slippery in this story—relationships, external reality, the distinction between self and other. The reader is trapped in that room as the narrator becomes less and less reliable and her mental state disintegrates, both in the usual sense of disintegration and its more usual sense of dis-integration. What is real and what is mental illness? We can’t be entirely certain.
For the rest of the stories (there are 39 and I don’t propose to discuss them all), a few stood out for me.
• “That Rare Jewel” (1980) deftly lays out the perils of gender stereotyping through a marriage proposal as narrated in alternation by the young man and woman in question.
• “An Unnatural Mother” (1895) shows us how cruel people in a homogeneous society can be toward difference, as gossips condemn a woman who has died saving everybody in town simply because she doesn’t follow their norms, which are revealed through their own words to be internally inconsistent.
• “Through This” (1893) lays out in a first-person, moment-by-moment account how the myriad details a woman working in the home has to attend to over the course of a day can stifle any wider thought or ambition, leaving her mired in the ordinary.
• “An Extinct Angel” (1891) gleefully shreds the “angel of the hearth” myth that dominated expectations of female behavior through much of the nineteenth century.
• A later story, “A Council of War” (1913), is interesting for the on-the-ground view it gives of the radical branch of the women’s suffrage movement.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman led an extraordinary life for a woman of her era, starting with being raised partly by the activist Beecher sisters and moving through two marriages and three same-sex loves while coping with bouts of major depression. She had little formal education but clearly a very active mind that had little patience for the hypocrisies and lies of society, engineered to favor men over women. She was an important thought leader in feminism, women’s suffrage, and the labor movement who wrote and lectured extensively. Like many such women in her day, she had her blind spots, focusing almost exclusively on white, educated middle-class women and their aristocratic angel patrons. But the radical dreaming of such people created many of the movements that have dramatically expanded human rights in the twentieth century and beyond.
February 15, 2025
I have always loved The Yellow Wallpaper, but I couldn't get myself through the rest. Her other short stories, like her values and idealogies, were DEFINITELY ahead of their time, but not quite ahead of mine.
Regardless, we love charlotte perkins and we love feminist literature!!!!
Regardless, we love charlotte perkins and we love feminist literature!!!!
October 5, 2025
3.5
I quite liked it, but having researched it prior, felt honestly rather underwheed by the thing itself. I’m a huge fan of any presentation of psychosis in lit- but I felt like the form didn’t do it justice. It felt a little too self-referential. I like neurosis having reckless abandon, which the story only reached further towards the end of the text- leaning more so into the abstraction. I’m a big fan of the feminist narrative- whether you read it explicitly, or as extended conceit. That, again still, I wish was a bit more drawn out- perhaps given time to be truly gruesome. Not to denounce the merits of the text, but I still do feel- overall- that the feminist commentary itself is thereby a little understated. Rather contained within itself, within its narrative- maybe a little individualistic. Then again- I do have a lot of praise elsewhere (the concept, some exceptional imagery, the scathing reflection on the author’s real life, etc). Makes me want to read a lot more of Gilman, to further relate any of her existing morals & politics to her books. I’d like to read her writings on eugenics, and see to what extent you can see them in any old text of hers.
Anyways- tldr: engaging and unique, though lacks a little richness (in my unwriterly opinion). Nobody pls read this review i’ll get embarassed probably
I quite liked it, but having researched it prior, felt honestly rather underwheed by the thing itself. I’m a huge fan of any presentation of psychosis in lit- but I felt like the form didn’t do it justice. It felt a little too self-referential. I like neurosis having reckless abandon, which the story only reached further towards the end of the text- leaning more so into the abstraction. I’m a big fan of the feminist narrative- whether you read it explicitly, or as extended conceit. That, again still, I wish was a bit more drawn out- perhaps given time to be truly gruesome. Not to denounce the merits of the text, but I still do feel- overall- that the feminist commentary itself is thereby a little understated. Rather contained within itself, within its narrative- maybe a little individualistic. Then again- I do have a lot of praise elsewhere (the concept, some exceptional imagery, the scathing reflection on the author’s real life, etc). Makes me want to read a lot more of Gilman, to further relate any of her existing morals & politics to her books. I’d like to read her writings on eugenics, and see to what extent you can see them in any old text of hers.
Anyways- tldr: engaging and unique, though lacks a little richness (in my unwriterly opinion). Nobody pls read this review i’ll get embarassed probably
March 13, 2025
3.2 - there was a nice variety of stories but most of them basically had the same point, it felt like reading the same thing in different perspectives. But there were a few gems other than to The Yellow Wallpaper, like Giant Wistaria, The Rocking Chair, and An Unnatural Mother that showed her strength for prose
November 22, 2022
Note: I just read "The Yellow Wallpaper" from this collection, and I really loved this Gothic masterpiece! As short as it was, the plot really had me enthralled and I think the power dynamics and significance of the "pattern" here are really important to explore.
April 16, 2020
The Yellow Wallpaper was really good, not so sure about some of the other stories
April 1, 2023
the medical misogyny from the husband grinds my gears
bertha mason vibes
bertha mason vibes
August 17, 2023
a lot of stories about early feminism & women’s liberation which is always a good time
the yellow wall-paper is a gothic standout
the yellow wall-paper is a gothic standout
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews