The Yellow Wallpaper

Avid readers and faithful fans, I would like to welcome you all back to another episode of Whiskey Before Breakfast. I do apologize for the delay, but with the start of a new semester many events and outings have been brought to the table thus, sucking away any time to write for this blog. Luckily I am taking an American Literature class so if my laziness proves to be a hindrance on my outside reading, then at least this class will force me to have some content. I would like to thank you all again for being such great fans and lovers of books for without you, Spence and I are nothing more than semi-established authors.

Since I mentioned American Literature in the previous paragraph I find it somewhat fitting to review a story from that class. This short story is fresh in my mind and still haunts me in the late hours of the night. American author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman published The Yellow Wallpaper in 1892 and ever since, set the feminist discussion into motion. Now, before you disregard this work as propaganda for women's rights, let me say that this story is chilling. It revolves around a compilation of journal entries written by an unknown woman who is locked away in her bedroom due to a severe nervous depression or "hysteria". The woman's husband, along with her physician, believe that the lack of interactions with people and the absence of intellectual stimulation will eventually cure her. Of course, they are unaware of her journal writings. As the story progresses the reader begins to see the slow dip into insanity that this woman is taking as her entries become more fantastical and all the more horrifying.

If Poe had a female voice this would be it. If Stephen King was born at the turn of the century this would be his story. I say this because there are many elements of the psycho-deterioration of one's mind where Poe and King find the most horrific stories to thrive. I found myself remembering Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart  and kept expecting this woman to hear heart beats and begin tearing up floor boards. In fact, there are some instances of her insanity manifesting themselves in the room and around the house. Throughout the story the woman refers to the wallpaper around her room to be disgusting and oblique. This drives her up the wall (pun intended) to the point where she spends hours a day just staring at the paper, trying to understand its pattern. Again, as her sanity begins to fade, she starts to believe that a woman lives behind the wallpaper and at night she wanders around the room in the moonlight.

The ending to the story is as eerie as you would expect. Yet, at the same time, there is a fairly strong feminist message in all of this, as I mentioned earlier. At the time, physicians and experts hadn't fully understood postpartum depression so they believed that women who suffered from it shouldn't be allowed to stimulate their intellect or any part of their brain for that matter. That, of course, escalated the situation and Gilman attempts to expose that truth by alluding to her own struggles with depression in this story. By rebelling and writing in a journal, the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper is attempting to save the little sanity that she has left.

Reading classic American Literature will never hurt anyone and to be honest, it has far more substance that most of the trash that makes it to the shelves these days (I'm looking at you Hunger Games). Educate yourself and pick up The Yellow Wallpaper today.

-- Zach