The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this ebook
Best known for the 1892 title story of this collection, a harrowing tale of a woman's descent into madness, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote more than 200 other short stories. Seven of her finest are reprinted here.
Written from a feminist perspective, often focusing on the inferior status accorded to women by society, the tales include "Turned," an ironic story with a startling twist, in which a husband seduces and impregnates a naïve servant; "Cottagette," concerning the romance of a young artist and a man who's apparently too good to be true; "Mr. Peebles' Heart," a liberating tale of a fiftyish shopkeeper whose sister-in-law, a doctor, persuades him to take a solo trip to Europe, with revivifying results; "The Yellow Wallpaper"; and three other outstanding stories.
These charming tales are not only highly readable and full of humor and invention, but also offer ample food for thought about the social, economic, and personal relationship of men and women — and how they might be improved.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in 1860 in Connecticut. Her father left when she was young and Gilman spent the rest of her childhood in poverty. As an adult she took classes at the Rhode Island School of Design and supported herself financially as a tutor, painter and artist. She had a short marriage with an artist and suffered serious postnatal depression after the birth of their daughter. In 1888 Gilman moved to California, where she became involved in feminist organizations. In California, she was inspired to write and she published The Yellow Wallpaper in The New England Magazine in 1892. In later life she was diagnosed with breast cancer and died by suicide in 1935.
Read more from Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Yellow Wallpaper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Herland Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/550 Feminist Masterpieces you have to read before you die (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Greatest American Short Stories: 50+ Classics of American Literature Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Greatest Ghost and Horror Stories Ever Written: volume 1 (30 short stories) Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Herland: original edition 1909-1916 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Yellow Wallpaper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Yellow Wallpaper: 125th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gothic Classics: 60+ Books in One Volume Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Yellow Wallpaper and Other Writings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Yellow Wallpaper Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Greatest American Short Stories (Vol. 1) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWOMEN & ECONOMICS Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings50 Halloween Stories you have to read before you die (Golden Deer Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5The Yellow Wallpaper (Legend Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Yellow Wallpaper: By Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Illustrated Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Yellow Wallpaper (Legend Classics) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Yellow Wallpaper Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Best American Short Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHerland Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories
Related ebooks
Wuthering Heights Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJane Eyre Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Turn of the Screw Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Dracula Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Gatsby Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Frankenstein Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Picture of Dorian Gray Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Carmilla Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Gadsby Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5H. P. Lovecraft: Tales of Terror Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Legend of Sleepy Hollow Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Mrs. Dalloway Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Beautiful and Damned Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSense and Sensibility Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Importance Of Being Earnest Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Castle of Otranto Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Woman in White Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Phantom of the Opera Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Passing Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Tale Of Two Cities Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Orlando Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The scarlet letters Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The age of innocence Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Silas Marner Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Stepford Wives Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Social Science For You
My Secret Garden: Women's Sexual Fantasies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Body Is Not an Apology, Second Edition: The Power of Radical Self-Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Art of Witty Banter: Be Clever, Quick, & Magnetic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row (Oprah's Book Club Selection) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All About Love: New Visions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5100 Amazing Facts About the Negro with Complete Proof Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Denial of Death Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Great Reset: And the War for the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Human Condition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Mercy: a story of justice and redemption Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories
114 ratings6 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A frightening book on one woman's decent into madness. Wonderful commentary on the life of 19th century upper middle class women. I recommend this book regularly.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Synopsis: A nameless narrator tells of a summer in a big house in the country where her physician husband has taken her on doctors orders in order for her nerves to get better (she is suffering from what we now know to be postpartum depression). The doctor has forbidden her (according with the thinking of the day) to have any form of mental stimulation, including writing. However, she manages to write in a journal and it is through this journal we, the readers, get to follow her journey into madness.My Thoughts: I skim-read this short story for my survery course last semester and really wanted to get back to it and read it properly. Having my seniors read it for their unit on poetry and texts seemed like a perfect time to do it. Then when the Women Unbound challenge was announced it seemed perfectly providential.I liked this story because it touches on something that is close to my heart, women's mental health. The story was written at the turn of the last century and it shows the vulnerability of women in a society that already saw them as weak and then compounded the problem by not acknowledging mental illness. Actually, they saw mental illness as something that could be overcome by not doing anything. And as can be seen by this story, this had dire consequences.Through the journal we get to follow the decent from a relatively mild form of postpartum depression into a raging psychosis. By infantilising his wife the husband and the doctors in the story isolate and compound the problem. By cutting off access to almost all of her friends and relatives the woman is left to ponder the pattern on the decaying wallpaper in the prison like nursery that her husband has designated as her room.I found this to be a fascinating story of the decent into mental illness and a powerful commentary on the time when it was written as well as giving an insight into the life of the author herself. A quick but powerful read I recommend to anyone!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5These stories are written in a different time frame, almost a century and a half ago, they are more literature than the made for TV tales turned out furiously on the computers of modern day authors, turned out with stories of violence and sex to attract an audience, rather than with interesting stories about life’s challenges. This collection of short stories was simply a pleasure to read. Each one, on its own, had a different theme about women. One story was about a misunderstood woman going mad after the birth of her child, when her hormones were batting each other around like baseballs.Another was about a young woman wronged, who haunts the dreams of those living in the home she once lived in with her fatherless child. The next is about a pampered woman who finds her own strength and grows independent. Then there is the story of a bitter, over zealous aunt who makes a deceitful bargain with her great nephews, only to be chastised by the minister for her duplicity.The selection of stories is wholesome. There is a mixture of the real with the mystic. There is no stupid sex or foul language. There is really no violence to speak of and there are happy endings, of a fairy tale nature, in some cases. They cover the gamut of women’s issues, career, emotion, freedom, purpose, love, marriage, divorce, devotion, loyalty, faithfulness, religion, responsibility, and even vengeance, but all of the stories are treated in such a way that they do not tax the reader, but rather they entertain perfectly with the style and the message.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I'm not sure what to make of this collection. Some of them speak powerfully of the human condition and state of mind. Others are so much of their time and place that they seem to be period pieces, divorced from a current reality, the second piece, in particular, contains reactions that I think the modern mind finds difficult to catch. The title piece seems to capture a descent into madness, told through the pattern on the yellow wallpaper of their bedroom. The colour appears to change with the mood of the viewer and it's really quite haunting. It is certainly worth reading.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I think a lot of the "points" to these stories were over my head, given the discrepancy in time periods between when these were written and me reading them now in modern day. However!, I did enjoy reading all the short stories and really, I think that's all that matters.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Normally I have little attraction to or respect for Women's Studies" courses, and I'm troubled by some aspects of Feminism. But if this book were the primary text for a college class, I might just sign up.
What I found most interesting about this collection is that the title story is the earliest included. Gilman's later personal works were not so well-crafted. The classic story of madness is horrifying and powerful indeed, as are a couple of other 'gothic' stories including "The Giant Wistaria." Most of the rest of the many stories here are shorter and more didactic.
But, they are *all* worth reading. They show how a variety of different women, and groups of women, can make choices and make a difference, in their own lives and in society. Some are downright Utopian, many are *almost* implausibly idealistic. But all are inspirational and provocative.
Oh, but I should add, before you misunderstand... Gilman did not hate men. She hated the way some men dominate social structures in order to denigrate women, and there's strong evidence that she would have preferred the intimate company of women had that option been available to her. But men can appreciate this book, too.
There is one other category of works included here. Fascinatingly, Gilman did some experimental writing, crafting several stories 'in the style of' other well-known authors, including Alcott, Kipling, Twain, and Henry James. Those are impressive, and fun to read, too."