The Yellow Wallpaper

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Overview

Presented in the first person, the story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman (Jane) whose physician husband (John) has confined her to the upstairs bedroom of a house he has rented for the summer. She is forbidden from working and has to hide her journal from him, so she can recuperate from what he calls a "temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency," a diagnosis common to women in that period. The windows of the room are barred, and there is a gate across the top of the stairs, allowing her husband to control her access to the rest of the house.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781627933957
Publisher:	Start Publishing LLC
Publication date:	11/27/2013
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	16
Sales rank:	92,405
File size:	179 KB

About the Author

Charlotte Gilman was a prominent American sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and non fiction, and a lecturer for social reform. She was a Utopian feminist during a time when her accomplishments were exceptional for women, and she served as a role model for future generations of feminists because of her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle. Her best remembered work today is her semi-autobiographical short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper", which she wrote after a severe bout of postpartum depression.

Table of Contents

About the Series
About This Volume
List of Illustrations

PART I. THE YELLOW WALLPAPER: THE COMPLETE TEXT

Introduction: Cultural and Historical Background

Chronology of Gilman's Life and Times

The Yellow Wallpaper [1892 New England Magazine Edition]

PART II. THE YELLOW WALLPAPER: CULTURAL CONTEXTS

1. Conduct Literature and Motherhood Manuals
Catharine Beecher, From A Treatise on Domestic Economy
Susan Power, From The Ugly-Girl Papers
Julia and Annie Thomas, From Psycho-Physical Culture
Marion Harland, "What Shall We Do with the Mothers?"
Margaret E. Sangster, From Winsome Womanhood: Familiar Talks on Life and Conduct
Frances E. Willard, From How to Win: A Book for Girls
William Acton, From The Function and Disorder of the Reproductive Organs

2. Invalid Women
S. Weir Mitchell, From Wear and Tear, or Hints for the Overworked
S. Weir Mitchell, "Nervousness and Its Influence on Character"
S. Weir Mitchell, "The Evolution of the Rest Cure"
Prudence B. Sauer, From Maternity: A Book for Every Wife and Mother
John Harvey Kellogg, From The Household Monitor of Health
John Harvey Kellogg, From The Ladies' Guide in Health and Disease
Alfred Meadows, "Puerperal Mania"
Fordyce Barker, From The Puerperal Diseases

3. Sexuality, Race, and Social Control
1873 Comstock Law
Anthony Comstock, From Traps for the Young
Theodore Roosevelt, Address to the National Congress of Mothers, March, 1905
Edward Alsworth Ross, From "The Causes of Race Superiority"
George M. Beard, From American Nervousness
A. J. Bloch, From "Sexual Perversion in the Female"
Havelock Ellis, From "Sexual Inversion in Women"
Richard von Krafft-Ebing, From Psychopathia Sexualis
Lester Frank Ward, From Pure Sociology
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Parasitism and Civilised Vice"

4. Movements for Social Change
Angela Heywood, Selections from The Word
Edward Bellamy, From Looking Backward: 2000–1887
Thorstein Veblen, From The Theory of the Leisure Class
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, From Women and Economics
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Think Husbands Aren't Mainstays"
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Dr. Clair's Place"
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, From The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

5. Literary Responses and Literary Culture
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper?"
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, On the Reception of "The Yellow Wallpaper"
William Dean Howells, From Criticism and Fiction
Henry James, From The Notebooks
Alice James, From The Diary of Alice James
Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour

Selected Bibliography