BOOK REVIEW
Why ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ still resonates today
“I’m glad my case is not serious! But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing. John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer and that satisfies him.” — “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Discussions about postpartum mental health have surged lately due to the renewed medical and legal attention surrounding high-profile cases like the Lindsay Clancy trial, which highlights severe postpartum psychosis.
I have been watching the discussion on this case and remembered reading “The Yellow Wallpaper” and thought, “What an important book to read at this time.”
Historically, women have largely been underdiagnosed on many levels. We continue to be told that it’s just nerves or hormones and all you need is rest. It’s nice to hear doctors trying to educate men and women that mental health and physical health are just as important to women as they are to men.
Women go through many stages in their lives that affect our mental health, from puberty to childbirth to perimenopause to menopause. There are so many ways in which our bodies change and that affects our minds.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) is a story about a woman (whose name is not revealed). She suffers from what her husband, who is a doctor, has told her is a nervous depression. The story also alludes to the fact that the woman is suffering in postpartum.
Her husband doesn’t believe that her condition is bad, but he ends up renting a house for three months and keeps her in a room with yellow wallpaper in what she describes as a “sprawling flamboyant pattern committing every artistic sin.”
She begins to obsess over the yellow wallpaper. The longer she is in this home, her mental deterioration increases. She believes that she sees a woman who is trapped inside the wallpaper, and she is trying to free her. As she is in this room, she sneaks writings in her journal that document her stay in this house. As I read the book the entries seem to change — her sentences become short, fragmented phrases that represent the breakdown of her mind.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) was an American writer born in Hartford, Connecticut. She grew up in poverty but later attended the Rhode Island School of Design. She ended up marrying and giving birth to a daughter named Katharine and began to suffer from depression.
She later moved to California and spent many years writing and lecturing on what it is to be a feminist. She had terrible views on minority groups and always promoted eugenics, but she was known for discussing women’s rights issues, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” is her most well-known short story.
Deborah Condit is the owner of Books on the Bosque, 6261 Riverside Plaza Lane, Suite A-2 or at .
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