Reading the Classics discussion

Amle suggested that we add The Yellow Wallpaper as a spooky short story read. I thought I would take her up on that and post it so we could read it and discuss it.

So here is The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

I may be the only one besides Amle to have read this, but while enjoyed is probably the wrong word, I appreciated it. It's clearly a story about a woman descending into madness. She suffers from a 'nervous' condition, as diagnosed by her physician husband, who has prescribed a long rest in the country. She seems to have been confined to a large room on an above-ground floor, with barred windows, a large bed nailed to the floor, and ugly, patterned, sickly-yellow wallpaper. The narrator seems to think this was once a nursery, tho I wondered if it was, even in past, host to a mentally ill patient.

The story is clearly set a very long time ago (my guess was late 1800s, and it turns out the story was first published in 1892), and the writer seems to be asking whether the 'cure' might actually be a serious part of the problem. I did some research and women at this time were often prescribed something called 'the rest cure', where they were frequently isolated and deprived of all stimulation, whether physical, mental, social or otherwise. The story is a form of protest over the lack of control women had over their own lives, even over their own health, in marriage and in society.

Gilman was, apparently (and as it turns out), an early feminist, and The Yellow Wallpaper is now considered part of the canon of Feminist Lit. Thank you for suggesting it, Amle.

As far as I now, from what I have read about her, Gilman based this story on her own experiences with treatment for some "female hysteria".

My guess is that the narrator suffered from some sort of post-partum depression, but that's just my interpretation of the story.

The reality of Gilman's experience with this treatment makes the story even more disturbing to me. The descriptions of the narrator's descent into madness from isolation and lack of stimuli is so saddening and terrifying. Her lack of power over her own life is heartbreaking.

It's definitely not a fun read in the literal sense, but I got so much out of it when I read it the first time (and my immediate re-read) I'm glad I'm not alone in appreciating this story.