Title: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Details: Copyright 1892, (various)
Synopsis (By Way of Wikipedia Summary):
""The Yellow Wallpaper" (original title: "The Yellow Wall-paper. A Story") is a short story by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, due to its illustration of the attitudes towards mental and physical health of women in the 19th century.
Narrated 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. Forgoing other rooms in the house, the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment, the unnamed woman is forbidden from working, and is encouraged to eat well and get plenty of air, so she can recuperate from what he calls a "temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency", a diagnosis common to women during that period."
Why I Wanted to Read It: I'll be honest, this was a bit of a trolling read, if such a thing exists. When quarantine first started happening this year mid-March, jokes rolled around about "Now NOT being the time to reread The Yellow Wallpaper!" and as I had only heard of the story before (but never actually read it) why not?
How I Liked It: I should mention that I'd seen that this short story was assigned reading to many in high school.
I have a rather mixed relationship with assigned reading and education. From elementary to high school and beyond, for every wonderful teacher I had that truly cared about the work and wanted us to care and truly think about it, there were three teachers only there to check off boxes. This is unfortunately not an uncommon experience, but we're not here to talk about the many flaws in the American education system (I am aware teachers are criminally underpaid, subject to all sorts of hideously compromising ethical situations, and the problems are only getting worse), only to get to how it relates to how I review, which I promise we're getting close, I assure you.
I also had a unique problem in that I always loved to read, read voraciously, and usually finished the assigned book the first night we received it rather than waiting and reading with the class. So while I was fortunate that the box-checker type of teacher wasn't going to put me off reading, as they sadly did for many, I also was more liable (or so those sorts of teachers feared) to form impressions of the book that according to the curriculum I was not supposed to form.
Maybe we're supposed to notice that Blue Curtains Symbolize the Main Character is Depressed, but say I notice that the side character appears to be developing a drinking problem instead.
What on earth does all of that have to do with this short story? Well, unfortunately, that means I have to wonder what ham-fisted ridiculous questions box-checker teachers have come up with through the years to suck all originality, joy, and wonder out of reading this story. But we'll put that aside for now.
The story is a kind of cipher, open to interpretation. I tried to leave the political and social commentary (well, possible political and social commentary) aspects of it aside when I read to focus on the story itself.
It's a highly enjoyable kind of gothic horror with a twist ending, and it's a well-paced kind of creeping fear that's hard to get right although often attempted, and the author pulls it off successfully.
The heroine (or at least main character) strikes an interesting balance between just filling in enough so we care about her but somehow keeping her out of any number of unflattering tropes and/or stereotypes. We're supposed to relate to her, after all, and her growing obsession and fascination.
The story's conclusion I hesitate to (and yet still do) call a twist, but it's a perfect and satisfying ending.
The story purportedly takes on (or can take on) mental health treatments enforced on women during that period, the treatment of women in general but especially when it came to healthcare, and women's changing role at the turn of the Victorian era. You don't have to squint or do any mental jumping jacks to see that. But it's worth also acknowledging that it's a gripping, good scary story with entertainment value.
I only hope that the generations of students forced to cut apart this story by bored and curriculum-tied teachers at least could find and will find that out.
Final Grade: A
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