The Yellow Wallpaper (Wisehouse Classics - First 1892 Edition, with the Original Illustrations by Joseph Henry Hatfield)

This is written by a lady suffering from oddness in her ways of being hyperimaginative to the extend that when confined for days in a room with very little items but a yellow wallpaper that ran around the walls, she romanticised it into realistic stories and people who replaced the quiet moments of her solitude, in fullness and shape.Many doctors, and close ones will get annoyed with the next paragraph of my review….Be prepared….If there is one thing I will forever be grateful for—> it is to have chosen ‘Ophthalmology’ over ‘Psychology’ while selecting my choice of specialisation.I could NEVER EVER have considered living being a hyper imaginative, spiritually-interested person (which I discovered only 2 years back) to invest all of my life in treating mental illnesses with MEDICINE when one can surely transcend them all by simply observing in the rifted spacious expanse of ‘Being’ and watch that our personalities too can be watched, that they too are in constant flux. Reality transcends words, and science is trapped in it, so I would have absolutely lost my mind pursuing a subject like that when I watch how prejudiced science is in its faith in itself, never bothering keeping it ‘Open-ended’ and as ‘what-if-I-didn’t-know-it-all,’ and as ‘what-if-what-I-know-is-gravely-wrong.’ The more I study humans minds and mankind, the more I notice people operating from unconsciousness, o Boy! Have I seen a whole truckload of mental illnesses in my vicinity already! In justification of my own claims, the word “mental illness” is a societal construct. It is of no consequence to existence, but, nevertheless, has drastic effects to the life of a human in her operation in society. In this story, her physician psychologist husband refuses to admit into his mind the true nature of her inner state, or how the floating thoughts she operates from conjures up things randomly out of mere objects. He is more terrified and prejudiced about her condition, and subjugates unto her, his wife, his dominance of having a hold on science of psychology as carrying reasons enough to delegate her plight to a position of handicap. This is absolutely unacceptable in my opinion. If you haven’t given the person with a different way of looking at the world a chance to speak for herself even if it trembles the whole of you, where is your consideration-streak as a doctor?!! It doesn’t exist!(This is not to say that some conditions are genuinely pathological and medicine will be needed there. But even if I don't know anymore than what I last read Psychiatry, I will always speak against medicine being the forerunner for securing an efficient way to deal with a human's oddness.....it doesn't work! ABSOLUTELY not! )Another point—> My opinion about the words—‘psychosis’ and ‘mental illness’ is the book’s blurb—> that the lady’s condition is pure mental illness in terms of society only. But I have come to notice a certain degree of madness within myself (and you will know that in a minute) so I feel like redefining these words “mental illness” as “madness’-necessity-for-producing-the most-consuming-art.” That offers a lot more consideration to this plethora of mental variations that some are born with—to degrees veritably conspicuous or largely invisible (I discovered my creative madness since say 2018….sooo late in life!! So it remained invisible for soooo many years….maybe it is invisible in you too now).Judging from the above two stanzas, you will come to realise that I am neither debasing the writer with the odd mental faculty to a sorry state nor am I elevating her to one of unruffled recognition and okay-ness.She has a place, IN THIS VAST WORLD full of UNLIMITED DIVERSITY, that’s all….what takes soo many people to wholly push aside and never consider simply because judgements are only in relation to “Society”!“Looking down” on another is dropping this truth aside and assuming you are is absolute knowledge of IT ALL. Booo! You aren’t! Nobody is! We are all lost! So, this much of my review, if deeply understood, must enable anybody to deeply understand that we are no “superior-being” or “better-functioning” in this world. But since we have to live in society to survive and live on, the least we can do is grant consideration and support, AND ABOVE ALL AN ABILITY TO simply state, “I-don’t--know—what—I-am-not-experiencing’ in whatever ways possible, so you remain in the position of allowing the person with whatever “oddness” that you see in them, the benefit of consideration as a living person whose demands and thoughts have a place.One line that begs quotation right here is from Miguel Ruiz, “ Don’t make assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want.”Here the review will deflect a little because I feel madness creates the most beautiful art….I don’t know why few people noticed this….look at the art that can be borne out of a hyperimaginative mind!!!——it is only when the hyper imagination becomes the driving force of your life and cripples you in the process that you do actually become incapable of carrying yourself in this world alone and you become what people term as “handicap”. But I wonder why nobody noticed that in lesser degrees this is the exact madness that is causing all artists to create—the writers to materialise the what-is-not!So, to speak a little about how I see myself in a lower degree figure of the lady’s condition….1)I spend a lot of time talking to animals and plants. I even sing to plants :) I enjoy hugging them….they are life…which life doesn’t want to be loved? All do.2)I see roadside, post-rainfall sludge and it reminds me of chocolate one day, and a township of brown-coloured irregular-shapes and low-heighted mounds of wet Earth on another day.3. When returning back home from work, humans on the street and in neighbouring cars often pop out of the canvas of the crowds and I unstoppably swiftly construe assumptions of why the person could not be smiling in passing….or otherwise…., what dreams he or she has or why they chose to wear the colour purple.In conclusion I will quote ― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God“Some people could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships.”I have never enjoying writing a review soo much!(PS—-To all those who don’t see me as myself anymore, all you know are assumptions that your mind makes——you have no clue how I REALLY function and I don’t blame you because ‘how could you know when I began discovering the real me a little over 2 years back—I travel to worlds beyond in everything I see…..and Charlotte Perkins in her distant presence helped me somehow grasp I have a place in being exactly what I am)Lastly, the writing in this book is impeccable beautiful!If I had read this book as a child, it would have frightened me but, with maturity, I see all fear dies!

Short book but such an amazing read

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a classic from 1890s and a very powerful feminist novella. It’s about a woman battling postnatal depression in the Victorian Era who has been prescribed the ‘rest cure‘. “Rest Cure” was a popular prescription to battle the then called nervous disorder. The therapy included being at home all the time, having two hours of actual life a day and never touching a pen or a brush or a pencil ever. In short, it needed you to be ‘domestic’ and cut you off any kind of mental or social stimulation.“If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?”Written as a monologue, we find the protagonist of the book narrating how she finds her new mansion queer and the yellow wallpaper of her bedroom disturbing. We find how John, her ‘loving husband’ brushes it all off by claiming it as just her hysterical tendency. She keeps on narrating how she disagrees with her husbands treatment methods but cannot do anything about it. Through her narration we witness her helplessness in the imprisonment of her house and her marriage. And then through it all, we watch her descent into psychosis. Watch her slowly get obsessed with the very wallpaper and hallucinate women trapped in it. We witness her fixation on setting them free.“Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.”This book is multi dimensional. It is about the terrifying impact the specific treatment had on people and on Gilman herself. It’s about how constantly not acknowledging her medical condition and the mistreatment drives her to insanity. It’s about our unstable protagonist and so many other women. It is about andro-centricism and how a certain gender dominated the field of medicine in the 19th century. It’s also about patriarchy and an unequal marriage. About how much control men have had on our lives and over our minds.Partly autobiographical, The Yellow Wallpaper is a disturbing and yet an important book. The story is haunting. The writing, compelling.

"If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?”It is disheartening to see the neglect of mental health in our society today and one may wonder if the situation has really improved from what it was 200 years ago? Always been dismissed as hysteria, from the beginning of time? It is this overwhelming ignorance of mental problems that led to so many being institutionalized in the past, and it is the reason why the repressed Victorian woman was such a tremendous symbol of the age.Inspite of being hardly 30 pages, this story will leave an impact which some books with 300 pages do not. An exceptionally fine example of how a woman, neglected, belittled, dismissed, descends into insanity.The most frightening books aren’t the ones that make me scream in the dark. They are those which give the feeling of despair, and make one relate with the emotional upheaval the narrator is going through. They keep you awake not out of fear but out of restlessness and an inability of action on your part.I would recommend this book to everyone just for the empathy it evokes in you.A note on the author.I felt compelled to find out more about Charlotte-Perkins Gilman after reading this. This is a semi-autobiographical work as she battled depression and was written off by major physicians. However neither post-partum psychosis nor the frustrations of patriarchal pressures ended her life.In her own words, she took control and "chose chloroform over cancer", when diagnosed with breast cancer.

This review is for the Wisehouse Classics edition, so please be careful if this automatically gets cross posted by Amazon. As well as the famous short story this has the original illustrations by Joseph Henry Hatfield and a short introduction of sorts where we have an article by Charlotte Perkins Gilman which explains the origins and inspiration for this story.First published in 1892 Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story has fascinated and haunted readers ever since. Gothic and haunting, this story like Henry James’ ‘The Turn of the Screw’ contains ambiguity, so you can read this tale as a deeply disturbing haunting, or as a descent into madness.Gilman herself was a prominent feminist and this story is semi-autobiographical. Like the narrator here Gilman herself suffered depression after giving birth, and this short story really looks at how women were treated at the time. Our narrator is of middle class and she is left in an old colonial house for a rest cure holiday. Encouraged to remain in bed and just not really do anything at all stimulating we see how the narrator becomes obsessed, even haunted by the wallpaper in the room. From what is obviously a depressive episode we see the narrator descend into madness due to psychosis, making this as strong a read today as when it was first written and something that sits rather uncomfortably. With many people these days suffering mental illness, although some of these I just look upon as slightly eccentric behaviour, we can see how to a degree treatments have altered, with women no longer looked upon as something that are frail and less well able to cope than men.Although I have written here what the story is actually about as I mentioned earlier this can be read as a standard ghost story, and I don’t know really which way to read it makes it scarier, only you will be able to decide, depending upon your own life experiences. Sadly for Charlotte she suffered with depression from giving birth, and throughout her first marriage. Taking a controversial decision with regards to her daughter with her divorce Charlotte did happily marry again, but ultimately took her own life due to inoperable illness. Obviously for those who study feminism Gilman’s name will be just as well known due to other things, but for the vast majority of us this short story will always be something that affects us and gets under the skin.

I downloaded this one because it was referenced in the last book I read, Paul Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts. Also, it's a short story (about 30 pages) and free - and I'm shallow, what can I say? But I'm really glad I did, because it's a fabulous little psychological suspense about a woman slowly driven mad - by her wallpaper!"One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin."The story was written in 1892, in the form of a journal, and has pertinent things to say about how mental illness was viewed in those times, along with women's role in society. Despite the sad subject matter there are flashes of dry humour and the author's introduction at the beginning explains how she was inspired to write the story after suffering from post-natal depression.The narrator has recently moved to a large, decaying house with her husband to recover from 'temporary nervous depression'. Her husband, who is also her doctor, has refused to let her work (write), so she has nothing to occupy her mind other than to lounge about their bedroom and obsess about the wallpaper. She feels that,"There is something strange about the house - I can feel it. I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a draught, and shut the window."It's a little gem of a story, and I'm so pleased I discovered it. There are several free versions available to download, but I chose the Wisehouse Classics one because I liked the cover (yes, shallow!) and it contained the original illustrations.

This is one of my all time favourite stories, and rereading it served to remind me why!The haunting and chilling tale is told so profoundly, evocatively and beautifully in such a short number of words and every time I read this, I am transported into the tale: I become the haunted and unnamed female protagonist and the unsettling effect of the novels permeates into my own reality. Her demise into madness becomes my own.What strikes me most about this novel is how it portrays the treatment towards mental maladies and the patients suffering from them. It is such a historically overlooked predicament and is presented as such in this individual case. The protagonist's illness is allowed to manifest and culminate in this Gothic tale so that it feels almost paranormal at its pinnacle.The past treatment of both the female body and the mind are sensitive subjects that are allowed to be dissected in the modern consciousness though historical artifacts such as this. This is a short but powerful masterpiece, in which Perkins Gilman offers a valuable insight into oppression and madness.

Okay, I was expecting a lot more from this - which is maybe unfair of me. I’ve read rave reviews about how frightening it is and it’s such a famous text, I just expected... a bit more. It’s almost as though I missed something - but I often feel that with short stories. There’s just not the same satisfaction as a novel! I need to read some really good short stories to make me see otherwise, because I’m sure I’m wrong!

No words. Read it yourself, recommend it but do not tell anyone the reason why. A truly genius piece of writing.