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The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

4.04 · Rating details · 80,345 ratings · 2,222 reviews

Best known for the 1892 title story of this collection, a harrowing tale of a woman's descent into madness, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote more than 200 other short stories. Seven of her finest are reprinted here.

Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "turned," an ironic story with a startl ...more

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Paperback, Dover Thrift Editions, 70 pages

Published July 11th 1997 by Dover Publications (first published 1892)

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Oct 18, 2018 JV (semi-hiatus) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: classics, 2018, favourites, shorts-and-anthologies, feminism, 5-star-reads

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a remarkable woman and utopian feminist ahead of her time. Powerful, thought-provoking, and profoundly illuminating, Gilman developed seven short feminist narratives that seek to empower women and minorities oppressed by our patriarchal society. Highly polemical, gripping, and infused with relevant themes, she deconstructs the ideological subversion of both genders against the status quo, promotes civil rights and economic independence, and confronts the notion of to ...more

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Jul 31, 2011 Shovelmonkey1 rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: people who want a brief taste of madness

Recommended to Shovelmonkey1 by: 1001 books list and danielle23

Shelves: bookcrossing-books, 1001-books, read-in-2011

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Yup, that was me enjoying the spiralling descent into madness.

Ok all jokes aside, mental health is a serious issue and something which is more fragile than we realise - do not take it for granted people. We are lucky enough to live in a time when people recognise and understand depression and constructive, helpful treatments can be offered. Unfortunately for Charlotte Perkins Gilman, she inhabited the tail end of the Victoria Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Yup, that was me enjoying the spiralling descent into madness.

Ok all jokes aside, mental health is a serious issue and something which is more fragile than we realise - do not take it for granted people. We are lucky enough to live in a time when people recognise and understand depression and constructive, helpful treatments can be offered. Unfortunately for Charlotte Perkins Gilman, she inhabited the tail end of the Victorian Period when depression, post-natal or otherwise was a totally mysterious and misunderstood thing. A perfect Victorian solution to outward displays of "unusualness" was to put you in an assylum/prison/attic/foreign country (delete as viable depending on income and social status) and then just tell the neighbours that you were either indisposed for a reaaaaaaallllly long time, or that you were having a "little holiday". Similar to the little holiday you got sent on if you managed to get knocked up without having bagged yourself a husband first. Basically, you were disappeared for a while thus making everyone feel that society had been saved the awful sight of you making a show of yourself. Phew, well we wouldn't want to upset society now, heaven forbid!

The Yellow Wallpaper is Perkins Gilmans attempt to express the hopelessness of mental illness; effectively an invisible, inescapable cage around your mind (reflected by the imagery of the caged in woman locked behind the patterns in the wallpaper), which no one in the 1890s was capable of diagnosing correctly. Gilmans suffered from depression and so knew what she was writing about. I do always struggle with the idea of the self restraint which was exhibited by many of these women, the character in the Yellow Wallpaper included. If someone had repeatedly patronised me and told me that really there was nothing wrong with me apart from a mild case of nerves and the tendancy to be a bit hysterical, I'd have probably reacted by shouting

"HOW'S THIS FOR HYSTERICAL MOTHER F*CKER", before destroying all the furniture in the room. This snippet of text is short, sharp and truly sad with a suitably ambiguous ending, after all where does the madness end? ...more

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Oct 20, 2018 Beverly rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

So, so good, the belittling and infantilizing treatment of this poor woman, and her entrapment in the room with the yellow wallpaper by her physician husband is a case history in how to drive someone completely insane.

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Dec 06, 2015 BrokenTune rated it really liked it

Shelves: reviewed

"This wallpaper has a kind of subpattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then. But in the places where it isn’t faded and where the sun is just so—I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design."

Classic horror in small doses provided by an author I had not heard about but who is now someone I will seek out for other stories.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Yell "This wallpaper has a kind of subpattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then. But in the places where it isn’t faded and where the sun is just so—I can see a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design."

Classic horror in small doses provided by an author I had not heard about but who is now someone I will seek out for other stories.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Yellow Wallpaper tells the story of a woman who is incarcerated in her own house and basically confined to rest in a room without being allowed to do anything. No work, no mental diversion. All because her keepers - mainly her husband - believe this is what is best for her, even though he does not understand the reason for the woman's illness:

"John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him."

Over the three months (!) of her confinement, the woman has nothing to occupy her mind except for the room she is in and the wallpaper hanging in pieces:

"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."

In fact, the description of the room strongly reminded me of Stefan Zweig's Chess Story, where a prisoner is held and where isolation, inactivity, and a bare room is used as a form of torture. In order to keep sane, the prisoner starts an imaginary chess game against himself, which he cannot win.
So, when reading The Yellow Wallpaper's first few chapters, I suspected that the story might reveal similar motives. As the paragraphs went on, however, I became less interested in the motives of the "carers" (or captors) and instead increasingly interested in the woman's identity. She is not named. Was she a person or was she a ghost?

For a story written in 1890, The Yellow Wallpaper packs a lot of punch. I had not expected that the story was not really written as a horror story, but was written as social commentary based on the author's own experience, which in fact just adds to its poignancy.
When Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote the The Yellow Wallpaper, she knew about suffering from post-natal depression and had first-hand experience of the then newly developed prescription on rest cures - a treatment consisted primarily in isolation, confinement to bed, dieting, electrotherapy and massage - because she had been a patient of the developer of said cure, Silas Weir Mitchell, who even gets a mention in The Yellow Wallpaper.

I guess, this is another instance where fiction and fact are inseparable, and where circumstances that once described the fate of real people will now pass as classic horror. ...more

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Dec 14, 2007 J.G. Keely rated it it was ok

Shelves: fiction, america, reviewed, short-story, horror, gothic

Roland Barthes talked about 'writerly' and 'readerly' books. I've struggled for a long time, myself, in trying to come up for terms to talk about the differences between deliberate works and those which are too bumbling, too one-sided, or too ill-informed to make the reader think.

While The Yellow Wallpaper brings up interesting points, it does not really deal with them. The text has become part of the canon not for the ability of the author, which is on the more stimulating end of middling, but Roland Barthes talked about 'writerly' and 'readerly' books. I've struggled for a long time, myself, in trying to come up for terms to talk about the differences between deliberate works and those which are too bumbling, too one-sided, or too ill-informed to make the reader think.

While The Yellow Wallpaper brings up interesting points, it does not really deal with them. The text has become part of the canon not for the ability of the author, which is on the more stimulating end of middling, but because it works as a representational piece of a historical movement.

As early feminism, this work is an undeniable influence. It points out one of the most apparent symptoms of the double-standard implied by the term 'weaker sex'. However, Gilman tends to suggest more than she asks, thus tending toward propaganda.

It may be easy to say this in retrospect when the question "is isolating women and preventing them from taking action really healthy?" was less obvious back then. However, I have always been reticent to rate a work more highly merely because it comes from a different age. Austen, the Brontes, Christina Rossetti, and Woolf all stand on their own merits, after all.

This symbolism by which this story operates is simplistic and repetitive. The opinions expressed are one-sided, leaving little room for interpretation. This is really the author's crime, as she has not tried to open the debate so much as close it, and in imagining her opinion to mark the final word on the matter, has doomed her work to become less and less relevant.

This is the perfect sort of story to teach those who are beginning literary critique, because it does not suggest questions to the reader, but answers. Instead of fostering thought, the work becomes a puzzle with a solution to be worked out, not unlike a math problem. This is useful for the reader trying to understand how texts can create meaning, but under more rigorous critique, it is not deep or varied enough to support more complex readings.

Unfortunately, this means it is also the sort of story that will be loved by people who would rather be answered than questioned. It may have provided something new and intriguing when it was first written, but as a narrow work based on a simplistic sociological concept, can no longer make that claim.

The story is also marked by early signs of the Gothic movement, and lying on the crux of that and Feminism, is not liable to be forgotten. The symbolism it uses is a combination of classical representations of sickness and metaphors of imprisonment. Sickness, imprisonment, and madness are the quintessential concepts explored by the Gothic writers, but this work is again quite narrow in its view. While the later movement was interested in this in the sense of existential alienation, this story is interested in those things not as a deeper psychological question, but as the allegorical state of woman.

Horror is partially defined by the insanity and utter loneliness lurking in everyone's heart, and is not quite so scary when the person is actually alone and mad. Though it does come from the imposition of another person's will, which is horrific, the husband has no desire to be cruel or to harm the woman, nor is such even hinted subconsciously. Of course, many modern feminists would cling to the notion that independent of a man's desire to aid, he can do only harm, making this work an excellent support to their politicized chauvinism.

I won't question the historical importance or influence of this work, but it is literarily very simple. A single page of paper accurately dating the writing of Shakespeare's Hamlet would also be historically important, but just because it is related to the threads of literary history does not mean it is fine literature. ...more

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Dec 29, 2018 Ivana - Diary of Difference rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: stars-4, read-in-2018, format-ebook

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I haven’t read much classic reads this year, and a few days before the end of 2018, I decided to go for a classic short story, and I chose The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

This classic has been written by a woman in the 19th century. A time when women weren’t treated the same way as today. A difficult time, where women couldn’t express their opinion as they wished, but they were suppressed by the male authority in the family.

When ...more

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Oct 11, 2017 Apatt rated it it was amazing

Shelves: horror, classics, short-stories

“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.”

Oh my gawd! This story creeped me out! I have never heard of The Yellow Wallpaper until I saw t ...more

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Oct 06, 2017 K. Elizabeth rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 5-stars, mystery, short-story, classics, memorable-characters, original-idea, reviewed, fiction

Reread in October 2018

As always, amazing writing and stories that make you think. Gotta love Gilman, not only for her talent of writing, but her courage to write such feminist pieces during the 18th century.
_____________________________________________

5 STARS

I only had to read The Yellow Wallpaper for class, however, as soon as I read that short-story, I knew I would have to read her other stories. Gilman's writing is flawless. I honestly think Charlotte Perkins Gilman is my new favorite sho ...more

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Nov 14, 2017 Ron rated it really liked it

Shelves: anthology-collection, short-story

5 stars for The Yellow Wallpaper - Excellent short story. After looking into Gilman’s traumatic inspiration for writing it, I was wowed.

4 stars for the other stories included in this small book - all were good.

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Aug 29, 2012 David Schaafsma rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction-19th-century, eng-240-spr-17, madness-psychi-supernat-faith-proje, feminism

The Yellow Wallpaper, first published in 1992, is now a staple of middle and high school English classes and college (Gender and )Women’s Studies programs, linked to Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Ibsen’s The Doll House and similar texts reflecting on the damage patriarchy does to society, especially to women. Gilman wrote a lot of fiction, and also Women and Economics, was a friend of feminist and social reformer Jane Addams, and was increasingly a feminist critic of society.

Gilman also experienc ...more

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Dec 06, 2017 jv poore rated it really liked it

Shelves: own-it, short-stories

I read The Yellow Wallpaper in my 8th grade Literature class and I was a bit blown away. Parts of this short story have stuck with me since. So, when I spotted this tiny tome for only fifty cents, I had to have it.

The title story was every bit as eerie-creepy-quirky as I remember, but I had missed the stunningly superb writing. I'm so pleased that I revisited this! I thoroughly enjoyed the following stories as well.

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Jun 03, 2018 Diane rated it really liked it

Shelves: short-stories, classics

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a powerful short story about a woman going mad, in part because she's not allowed to do anything. Gilman did a beautiful job showing how frustrating it was when the woman's concerns weren't taken seriously, both by her husband and by others. The story is written as an argument against restricting women from activities — commanding them to "rest" isn't always restful; it's maddening.

I first read this story in high school, but I'm quite certain I didn't really understand ...more

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Dec 06, 2010 Paquita Maria Sanchez rated it liked it

Shelves: literature

*PREFACE TO REVIEW: I have a soft spot for literature about descents into madness. I blame it on my mother taking me to see Lost Highway in the theater at a young and tender age. I also blame this film, to a larger extent, on my fashion sense from then to now. Which is to say, I blame my mom. Who is, in fact, more sane than most.*

Ah, suicide authors! You do know madness so!!! There have been a few times where I have personally thought that I was going off my rocker, but considering that I've yet *PREFACE TO REVIEW: I have a soft spot for literature about descents into madness. I blame it on my mother taking me to see Lost Highway in the theater at a young and tender age. I also blame this film, to a larger extent, on my fashion sense from then to now. Which is to say, I blame my mom. Who is, in fact, more sane than most.*

Ah, suicide authors! You do know madness so!!! There have been a few times where I have personally thought that I was going off my rocker, but considering that I've yet to seal my (nonexistent) children into a room so I can gas myself into the ever-receptive arms of Death...or shot myself when I found out I had cancer...or poisoned myself with CHLOROFORM when I found out I had cancer like Gilman did (I don't have cancer), then I guess I'm doing fine, and far from at risk of being a mad genius whose descriptive abilities concerning my slow backward crawl away from the really real realities of for real realness are the first step in accepting my problem, which would be (and is not) insanity. Well, you can't win 'em all, I guess. For example, my rational mind begs me to wonder why "in the hell" Gilman opted for chloroform. I mean if I were crazy (WHICH I'M NOT, YOU WILL RECALL), I could think of much more fashionable, delightful, actually-seeing-angels-and-heaven-on-your-way-out-of-this-mortal-coil-and-into-the-worm-farm ways to go. Just saying, you should always explore all of your options before making a firm decision on any matter...particularly those of notable importance.

The Yellow Wallpaper is a well-written and I'm sure at the time quite shocking and groundbreaking feminist rebel-yell. The title story is the bestestest one...it concerns a crazy bitch who goes all crazy like women tend to do (KIDDING, GOODREADS TROLLS! KEEP YOUR CORSETS ON AND CHILL, BABY GIRLS!) The description of the narrator's break with reality is beautifully constructed, exploring the process of "reasoning" that leads a crazy person to firmly believe that they are not crazy, because they've been so gall-darn "rational" the whole time (as you will recall, I myself am not crazy. Trust me, I've thought it through). The rest of the stories present powerful critiques of male/female power dynamics, as well as female/female dynamics from the most sincere to the most socially fabricated, destructive and (sadly) often digested. It says to the readers (consider the audience...1890's folks) "How about NOT THAT. Have you ever considered NOT THAT? Maybe that is a poisonous thought-pattern worthy of, perhaps, a consideration of exploring whatever is NOT THAT." A message worth hearing, and which left its mark on perceptions of gender and identity from 1892 forward. You can't really criticize something like that, can you?

A CRITICISM: There is one story in the book called "Turned" which tells of a married couple and their adopted-from-the-streets-mega-hot-girl-daughter-figure. *SPOILER ALERT* Daddy-figure knocks her up. Mommy Dearest finds out, and is a whee bit upset. Here is this girl that she had saved from a life of poverty, personally educated, fed, clothed, the WORKS...all of this only to find out that the ungrateful little brat doll has been fucking your husband? WTF!!?!?!, you say! Yeah, that's right. It's called righteous vindication, and she deserved to experience and work through every bit of her initial feelings of anger. THEY WERE WELL DESERVED. However, Gilman's perspective is that the only person who has done anything wrong is the father-figure. I know, you may be thinking "I smell a Humbert Humbert," but let me fill you in on a little detail. The character being presented as a victim of the savageries of *the male sex* so to speak is 18 years old. Not 12. Not 14. Not 5. She is EIGHTEEN. They say that thirty is the new twenty, which would lead me to believe that in 1892, this poor, innocent "victim" was approaching her 30's as far as everyone else was concerned. Despite this fact, the mother changes her mind, puts on her man-hater suit, and takes the young WOMAN away and raises the child with her, abandoning the man to dwell in his regret without giving him a single opportunity to be involved in the life of his child. This rubbed me the wrong way, and it is my one truly deep gripe with this book. It just seemed so, forgive me but...femi-nazi. Pardon the cliche, but they say "it takes two to tango" for a reason, people.

In short, read it. It only takes an hour or two. And never assume you can get away with cheating (especially if you're living it up in the pre-birth control days, thankyouverymuch Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the ensuing feminists you directly inspired). This ramble is over.

...more

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Jan 28, 2018 Celia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018-read, classics, 2018-caz, kindle, 1001-challenge

The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent American feminist, sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform.

In her lifetime, she wrote over 200 short stories. 7 of them are included here.

The Yellow Wallpaper. I could have never imagined that a story describing wallpaper could be so engrossing. The descriptions, however, depict a woman going deeper and deeper into madness. And how the misdiagnosis of he ...more

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Jul 09, 2014 David rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: women trapped with Lovecraftian wallpaper, little boys dreaming of butter

Shelves: audiobook, female-protagonist, anthology, short-story, mental-illness, american-literature, female-author, feminist, 19th-century, literary

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was famous as a 19th century feminist author, and apparently she's taught in a lot of feminist/women's studies courses. I was vaguely interested in her most famous story, The Yellow Wallpaper, so when this collection was an Audible deal of the day, I went ahead and downloaded it.

I'm glad I did. I'll get to the title story in a minute, but I found the other short stories - which were all about a woman being presented with a choice (usually in the form of a man) very reada Charlotte Perkins Gilman was famous as a 19th century feminist author, and apparently she's taught in a lot of feminist/women's studies courses. I was vaguely interested in her most famous story, The Yellow Wallpaper, so when this collection was an Audible deal of the day, I went ahead and downloaded it.

I'm glad I did. I'll get to the title story in a minute, but I found the other short stories - which were all about a woman being presented with a choice (usually in the form of a man) very readable. Clearly there is a feminist undertone to each story, though bear in the mind this is 19th century "First Wave" feminism, so it remains largely a given that even a spirited, talented, independent-minded woman is still going to marry eventually. But Gilman was first and foremost writing short stories meant to have a beginning, middle, and end, and does not beat her readers over the head with any "message." In that respect, these stories were quite enjoyable, some of them having an O. Henry twist. I particularly liked the one about a moralistic, wealthy old spinster aunt who promises her two nephews $50 (a small fortune, especially to children) if they forego butter for an entire year, believing butter is bad for children and too "rich." They do, and when the year is up, the old bitch gives them their $50 in the form of membership pledges in a missionary society. The reader seethes with anger along with the boys at the injustice of it, but Gilman delivers a satisfying coda to the story.

Some of the stories are really just simple romances, though with a slightly feminist spin, but all of them showed that Gilman was a master of characterization and not bad as a prose stylist either.

Now, The Yellow Wallpaper is famous because it represents an early feminist look at the treatment of women and mental health. The main character is a wife suffering in the aftermath of some sort of nervous breakdown and made to stay in an upstairs room decorated with a hideous yellow wallpaper that she abhors. She wants to leave, she wants to do something, she craves mental stimulation, but her kind but egostistical and patronizing physician husband refuses to let her go anywhere or lift a finger. And so he accomplishes exactly the opposite of his intent as she slowly goes mad.

This has obvious significance as an indictment of how women with mental health issues were treated, how their concerns were not taken seriously, and how they could be reduced to powerless chattel even by the most well-meaning husband. However, as a horror fan, I submit that this story can be read completely differently...

... as a tale of Lovecraftian horror! A trapped woman slowly discovers the secret of the things that live in the in-between spaces accessible from our reality through unearthly patterns in a hideous yellow wallpaper. In the climax, her husband discovers her after she has gone insane from exposure to secrets man was not meant to know.

Seriously, read it that way and it totally works.

Anyway, I quite liked these stories, even the ones that were very short and had not much in the way of conclusion. ...more

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Jul 06, 2011 Gloria Mundi rated it really liked it

Shelves: creeptastic, 1001-books, unreliable-narrator, insane-in-the-membrane, curiouser-and-curiouser, gender, broken-doll-stories, gothika, short-stories

This is a short story about a woman's descent into madness and I have just the t-shirt slogan for the protagonist:

EXCUSE ME. I HAVE TO GO AND MAKE A SCENE.

Because that's what I wanted her to do throughout, but we cannot really expect that from a genteel 19th century lady and that is when the story was written. So does that mean that it is now outdated and irrelevant to us emancipated 21st century women?

Personally, I have gone through a period in my life when I took some pretty heavy drugs, staye ...more

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Nov 20, 2016 Olivier Delaye rated it really liked it

This well-written story about a depressed and possibly deranged woman who is convinced that the wallpaper of her bedroom is haunted/possessed/inhabited reminded me of China Mieville’s Details, which appears in his short story collection Looking for Jake. In both, the devil is indeed in the details…

OLIVIER DELAYE
Author of the SEBASTEN OF ATLANTIS series

The Forgotten Goddess (Sebasten of Atlantis, #1) by Olivier Delaye

...more

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May 27, 2020 Jason Howl rated it it was amazing

I owned this book and read (in daylight) it a long time ago. I didn't think it was that creepy. Apparently, it's a different experience at alone at night. The image of the trapped woman creeping through the faded design of the wallpaper, then the image of the main character crawling over her passed out husband actually rang a low-key alarm bell in my chest.

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Feb 02, 2011 Zaki rated it really liked it

A very sad tale about a woman who stares at her yellow wallpaper and gets so irritated and frustrated, that after a while she rips it off the wall.

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Dec 22, 2015 Mary rated it really liked it

Shelves: classics

I read this short story a few months ago on someone's recommendation when I said that the tile design at a hotel was driving me insane.

In retrospect, the tile was fine.

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Jul 14, 2010 Fiona rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, female-writers, short-stories, 52-book-challenge-for-2011

Inspired. Chilling. Alarmingly realistic. Witty. Devastating. Dark. Empowering. Radical. Outstanding. Classic.

Although I read and reviewed the novella Herland during the autumn of last year it was indeed the title story in this collection which led me to the literary door of Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

I am not really very sure whether I would have prefered to have read these works first. I was beginning to feel a little ashamed at just how long The Yellow Wallpaper had been decorating my bookcase ...more

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Oct 13, 2017 K. Elizabeth rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Feminists & Short-Story Lovers

Shelves: mystery, short-story, classics, fiction, reviewed, 4-stars, owned

4 STARS

"The Yellow Wallpaper" will always be my favorite short-story by Gilman. However, her others are good too. Not nearly as good as her most famous short-story (A Yellow Wallpaper), but very thought provoking and pro-feminist.

Wonderful!

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Aug 10, 2013 Aubrey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: life-after-life, reality-check, r-2014, 500-wm, 4-star, virago, antidote-think-twice-all, 1-read-on-hand, reviewed, r-goodreads

I'm giving this particular edition four stars because the selections it chose to include from Gilman's bibliography saved me a lot of time and questioning whether I should read her other works. The issue with her is common to many -ists and -ologists and general term for thinkers of that time period (which hasn't yet ended judging by the state of things today) who confuse rationality with shock value when it comes to any other reality outside of their own. As such, worded solipsism is taken as u I'm giving this particular edition four stars because the selections it chose to include from Gilman's bibliography saved me a lot of time and questioning whether I should read her other works. The issue with her is common to many -ists and -ologists and general term for thinkers of that time period (which hasn't yet ended judging by the state of things today) who confuse rationality with shock value when it comes to any other reality outside of their own. As such, worded solipsism is taken as universal truth, analogies drawn from "Chinamen" and "savages" are as seriously evaluated as those derived from bees and horses, and valuable insights are inextricably intermixed with pontifications that made me want to gouge my eyes and sensibilities out with a rusty spoon. In light of that, actions speak louder than words, in the sense that the story of her life proves much more admirable than the majority of her work. She may have been the type of feminist who only did the work due to socially constructed limits rather than holistic realization, but some of what she says is worthy of merit, and as a white woman who escapes the majority of her contemptuous stereotyping, I may as well relay the good bits back to those who would be fully in the right in throwing this book across the room.

Gilman is the most well known for her short and sweet tale of descending into madness which, of course, duh. The archetype of crazy-white-woman has ever been of superb appeal to academia, an appeal that chooses to indulge in the thematic structure of horror, the metaphorical constructions, any and all thought processes that need not concern themselves with the grittier aspects of postpartum depression and the lack of the vote which colored Gilman's composition. This in particular is why I'm very pleased with this edition, of which The Yellow Wallpaper is only one of eight short stories that are further ameliorated by selections from Herland, Women and Economics, and The Man-Made World. Much as the intersection of major depressive disorder with being a white woman concerns me on an intimate level, I am far more interested in mental methodologies that construct themselves in response than in lurid fictions of the experience itself. I have enough of that in my personal life without looking for it in critical theory.

Men who are not equal to good fatherhood under such conditions will have no chance to become fathers, and will die with general pity instead of living with general condemnation.

In regards to her short stories outside of The Yellow Wallpaper, the worth lies in her subversion of the canon of female characters who always do a certain thing a certain way that fits exactly with their flighty/jealous/nervous/weakened/kittenish/obtuse/male worshipping/etc etc etc aspects which, of course, are bullshit. The appeal of Gilman is how easily she makes the contrast, an ease that, similar to the Bechdel test, would lend itself well to progress if people stopped pretending conscious gynephobia was the only indicator of misogyny or that the canon was anything but really old made up stuff whose modification will not indeed, as protested by many a fanboy, cause the end of the world. Not the prettiest prose or craftiest of structuring and all that jazz, but the most impressive of linguistic fireworks won't rid the world of rape culture.

A family is a crude aggregate of persons of different ages, sizes, sexes, and temperaments, held together by sex-ties and economic necessity; and the affection which should exist between the members of a family is not increased in the least by the economic pressure, rather it is lessened.

Condemns the patriarchy while embracing patriarchal methods of reasoning, confuses personal gender with socially constructed ideologies in efforts to "solve" everything, half-heartedly wags a finger at capitalism and individualistic culture without acknowledging personal privilege, backhand compliments socialism and collectivist culture through Orientalist thinking and idealization of "motherhood", dangerously ignorant on matters of abused/Chinese/indigenous/any woman whose category she does not share, etc, etc. Still worth reading for when she hits the nail on the head in ways reminiscent of de Beauvoir, leastwise to me and my methods of evaluation. You may, of course, refuse to read her due to my criticisms. Just make sure you apply such choosing to all the white men running around the canonical mainstream who don't even have the advantage of being a woman to lend them some instinctive paradigm shifts. ...more

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Jan 08, 2017 Punya Gupta rated it it was amazing

Shelves: short-wonder, short-stories, wehmut, my-favourites

The Yellow Wallpaper is a chilling and brilliant short story of 6000 words by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Written in 1892 it is one of the first pieces of feminist literature available.
The story chronicles the descent of a woman into madness after she's kept under house arrest by her husband given her early signs of depression and anxiety.

This book was written in a conservative era where in women were not allowed to read and write and voice their opinions.

What's really thought provoking and disturb ...more

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Feb 12, 2018 Lorraine rated it really liked it

I loved this collection of stories. My favorite was ‘Martha’s Mother’. I read it twice in a row with a mighty laugh at the end. Most made me SO HAPPY and grateful that I, as a woman, didn’t live in these earlier times. ‘The Wisteria Vine’ is one story I’d like to read around a camp fire or darkened fireplace on Halloween night. I love the author’s writing style. In most cases she brings you along slowly, building each story, then hits it out of the park sometimes abruptly at the end. 👍👍

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Aug 20, 2007 Bailey added it

Recommends it for: anyone who thinks wearing a corset is a good idea.

I first read the Yellow Wallpaper as a moderately young person, when I was more concerned with being a young quasi-socialite than actually dissecting literature to learn something about how to best live my life as an intelligent person. I thought of school as the time between weekends, and the class-to-class routine as an overly respite for afternoon fun. I found, upon re-reading, that this story can teach me about how we can choose our own perception. Somewhere between moving into the former ch I first read the Yellow Wallpaper as a moderately young person, when I was more concerned with being a young quasi-socialite than actually dissecting literature to learn something about how to best live my life as an intelligent person. I thought of school as the time between weekends, and the class-to-class routine as an overly respite for afternoon fun. I found, upon re-reading, that this story can teach me about how we can choose our own perception. Somewhere between moving into the former children's nursery for better air circulation and being called 'my little pet' as a term of endearment, our dear protagonist developed a case of 'the nerves' that meant she can't keep reality and dream separate. Much like my desire (still!) to live for the weekends, our narrator lives for the darkness, when her newfound reality comes alive and tantalizes her senses. The night time, and the curiosity surrounding what was hidden in the wallpaper gave her an outlet for her imagination where her daytime identity would not. During the day, she despised that paper as much as she was fascinated at night. This woman was suffering before she arrived at this country home because she had no mode of expression!! I find it interesting how women, in general, can have love-hate relationships with so much in their lives- their hips, mothers, tan lines, career opportunities, our intelligence- and so often we direct that loathing towards ourselves and become unable to progress towards our better selves. The same facets of our lives that we agonize over and dwell on endlessly will command our attention as soon as our guard is down. This book encapsulates that compulsion to me. Rather than deny that attention during the waking hours, I seek fulfill the urge to follow my heart, regardless of the time of day. I am trying to learn, from this story, that rather than carry on like a stifled corseted housewife in a Victorian attic, I should seek to be full of wanderlust, curiosity and expression all the time, not only during the weekends. ...more

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Sep 28, 2007 Lori rated it it was ok

Like anyone who's ever taken a Womens' Studies course, I read The Yellow Wallpaper for a class. I felt completely insane during the time I was reading it.

Then I came across "Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gillman, and she says this "But the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading The Yellow Wallpaper. It was not intended to drive people crazy, ...more

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Sep 07, 2009 Madeline rated it really liked it

Shelves: assigned-reading, the-list

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Nov 01, 2020 Sara rated it liked it

Don't read this on the eve of another national lockdown!

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Jun 10, 2012 Val rated it it was amazing

This is one of my favorite (long) short stories to teach in high school. Though my Monday book reviews normally focus on full-length books, this short story is a great work to study as a horror writer. Gilman wrote the story as a result of her own mental breakdown. It was written in the late 1800′s when things like depression and postpartum depression were not understood. A popular cure was known as “the rest cure.” Women were given a strict schedule, mostly consisting of rest away from family a This is one of my favorite (long) short stories to teach in high school. Though my Monday book reviews normally focus on full-length books, this short story is a great work to study as a horror writer. Gilman wrote the story as a result of her own mental breakdown. It was written in the late 1800′s when things like depression and postpartum depression were not understood. A popular cure was known as “the rest cure.” Women were given a strict schedule, mostly consisting of rest away from family and familiar surroundings, but also containing a detailed schedule of food and drink, rest, mild activities. Even the women’s sexual activities were sometimes scheduled and enforced.

Gilman wrote this story to show the world that “the rest cure” was actually doing more damage than good. In the story, a woman slowly loses her mind while forced to spend three months in a house that her husband (a doctor) rented to allow her sufficient rest to overcome her mental ailments. During her time in the house, the woman is denied visits to family, mental or physical stimulation, and the freedom to discuss her feelings.

The most spooky, captivating, and awesome element of the story is its first-person point of view. The narrator is writing the account in her journal, something she must do only when no one else is around. Her journal begins with descriptions of mundane trivialities, but it becomes increasingly more disturbing. The narrator is locked in the nursery on the top floor of the house. The room’s most distinguishing feature is its yellow wallpaper, which features a dizzyingly-horrendous pattern. In the wallpaper, the narrator begins to see manifestations of her own self—a woman trapped and trying to get out.

From a writer’s point of view, Gilman’s use of first-person point of view can be used to study the building of suspense. Gilman provided just enough details for us to put together the pieces of the narrator’s growing madness (and its causes) without over-explaining and thus ruining the suspense. Gilman packs this short story with content, and I suggest reading it more than once—after learning the ending, you’ll pick up more and more details each time.

A final interesting note: Gilman admitted to writing the story for the purpose of informing the world of the dangers of “the rest cure.” In her day, she received evidence that she had saved at least one woman’s life as a result of the story, and at least one doctor modified his treatment after reading her story. It just goes to show the power of words, and the reason I continue to write. ...more

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About Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 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 li ...more