Friday, March 1, 2013

"The Yellow Wallpaper": A Review


Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is proof in black and white how a very short tale—only about fifteen pages—can develop characters, increase drama, and incite thoughtful discussion about deeper themes. In this short story, which is debated to be partially autobiographical—a young woman confined to a room with yellow wallpaper at the orders of her doctor and her husband. 


Why is she originally prescribed this sort of bed-rest? The answer is unclear. Possibly she has just had a baby…possibly she has post-partum depression. Possibly she is mentally ill.  Possibly she is perfectly fine but her husband wants her put away. 


Whatever her original state of physical and mental health, our narrator soon proves herself to be unreliable and slipping deeper and deeper into madness. The wallpaper is what gets to her the most.  She becomes fixated on its ugliness. She hates it. And she notices that it has marks on it, like someone has been rubbing on it. Eventually she sees the culprit: there’s a woman in the wallpaper. 


From the moment she begins her narrative, the woman has believed the house was haunted.  Now it seems she was right…although it might not be a ghost, after all, but something even more intangible: her mind itself.



Recommended Reading Age: High School

Parental Notes: Mental illness, feminism/antifeminism, and general thematic creepiness.

Adaptations:  Nothing they can adapt could be as ghastly as the nightmares I’ve had since reading this book. And yet I like this story. I own this story.


No comments:

Post a Comment