yellow wallpaper

[julydays]

have you read it...what do you think?
i loved it and read it several times

[Pecksie]

This is a funny coincidence as I just read it yesterday for the first time --- so my impressions are quite fresh!

I found it interesting, but not great writing. It's full of warning symbols, and the horror of the treatment meted out to 'hysterical' women (actually, this one was clearly suffering from post-partum depression) is decently described; also, she succeeds in building up this feeling of menace and increasing creepiness --- but, on the negative side, I found it quite predictable and, at certain points, rather naive...

Perhaps its enduring fame is due to its value as a historical document and an insight into the thoughts of an enlightened woman, rather than to its literary merit? I don't know. I've obtained a copy of her utopian novel, 'Herland' --which has been the subject of very mixed reviews -- as I want to give her another chance.

[LuggageFan]

I read that long ago, and as I recall, I didn't care for it. I don't quite understand why people rave about it but YMMV. Just seemed like a depressing story about a crazy woman.

[Dark Muse]

One of the common mistakes that is made about this story is the presumption of it as a horror story. When Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote she was not intending to write a horror story. While there are certainly some gothic and horror like elements within the story, the story was meant to be about the way in which women who were artistic, creative, and different in some way treated by the society at the time, and how they were treated as if they were mad, had some nervous disorder if they displayed in sort of eccentricity and deviated from the accepted norm. I believe Gilman also drew from her own experiences within a mental institution.

Within The Yellow Wallpaper the narrator of the story is patronized by her husband and her concerns are not listened to, nor is she validated or taken seriously as a writer and she is seen as simply having an overactive imagination. She is ultimately driven mad by the confinement which is imposed upon her, and she herself becomes the woman who is trapped within the wall paper and trying to break free from the confinement which the male driven society imposes upon women.

[OrphanPip]

I seem to remember there being an allusion to Jane Eyre at the end of the story as well. It's been a while since I've read it though. Gilman was aware of what she was doing using elements of the gothic in the depiction of female "hysterics."

I'll fish around my books to see if I can find it, I have it in two different collections I think.

[kelby_lake]

I found it interesting. It's predictable but the prediction is disturbing. Very creepy.

[Delta40]

I understand it was unique in that it brought to the forefront the lack of control women have over managing and making decisions over their own health at that time. Despite her increasing paranoia based on the prescribed cure of her husband, she still battles with her own sense of guilt for resenting what it is he is trying to do for her. The wallpaper images reflect a woman and then more women, until finally, she feels she is part of a collective strength who can finally break free of her confines. Its quite powerful in that it takes a movement to shift her from what she has been torturing herself over and knew in herself to be true but was not able to act on her own.

That is my interpretation

[Sulla]

It's one of those books you have to read in school.

I've read it a few times. It's not a story that you can ever forget.