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Title: The Yellow Wallpaper

Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Narrator: Erin Yuen

Format: Unabridged

Length: 40 mins

Language: English

Release date: 04-18-17

Publisher: Dreamscape Media, LLC

Ratings: 5 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Classics, American Literature

Publisher's Summary:

Presented in the first person, the story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband (John) has rented an old mansion for the summer and the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment, she is forbidden from working, but encouraged to eat well and get plenty of exercise and air, so she can recuperate from what he calls a temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency, a diagnosis common to women in that period. She hides her journal from her husband and his sister the housekeeper, fearful of being reproached for overworking herself. With nothing to stimulate her, she becomes obsessed by the pattern and color of the wallpaper, descending slowly into psychosis.

Members Reviews:

Moving and Disturbing

Thematically remarkable for a short story of that time from a female author. Gilman ratchets up the tension of a woman's psychological decline while simultaneously making a pointed critique of the era. It manages to be eerier than much of Poe without ratcheting up the Gothic tendencies of similar stories of psychological decline.

A Must-Read for Fans of Gothic Fiction

In "The Yellow Wallpaper", Charlotte Perkins Gilman explores the rest cure through a story in which her unreliable narrator slowly unravels like the wallpaper on which she fixates. The tale begins with the narrator entering a gothic manse fallen on hard times as part of her physician husband John's prescription, "absolutely forbidden to 'work' until" she is well (pg. 3). Locked in a room with only the curling patterns on yellow wallpaper to occupy herself, she slowly begins imagining that they move and ascribing personalities to the patterns. The narrator looks out the window and offers insight into her life, but this fades as the wallpaper comes to dominate her world, until she must climb inside it. The story offers useful historical insight into the rest cure while also serving as a good example of nineteenth century gothic fiction.

The Yellow Wallpaper

I have seen the movie and read the short story and will admit that I am still confused as to the ending. I suppose that the observer/reader must come to his or her supposition as to the outcome. However, this story does stir the imagination to form different ideas about what happens. I do feel certain that the woman is stifled by her husband in her life. I feel that she is imaginative and perceptive, where he is level-headed and not given to believing anything that can't be proven to his satisfaction. and that, I think makes all the difference as to the ending. I suggest seeing the movie and reading the story to reach a possible scenario to conclude this imaginative tale.

Stories by an early feminist

After enjoying âHerlandâ by this early feminist, I was anxious to read more. I bought a softcover edition which at 70 pages contains seven short stories written in the early 1900s. These stories depict very different times for women who were often subject to the decisions made by the men in their lives. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a chilling short story that shows the consequences of this type of situation. All the stories are very well written and enjoyable. Itâs hard to imagine such a repressive time. Itâs sad what so many women had to endure and Iâm very grateful for early feminists such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman who dared to voice her opinions in a public way.