Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)
The Yellow Wallpaper
American
Realism
Charlotte Perkins Gilman made a name for herself as a feminist writer, a suffragist, and a lecturer on social issues. Although her father, Frederick Beecher Perkins, walked out on his family when she was a baby, Gilman spent time with her father’s aunts: Harriet Beecher Stowe (author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin), Isabella Beecher Hooker (a suffragist), and Catherine Beecher (an educator and advocate for female education). Gilman argued that fundamental changes in society were necessary for women to achieve equality. In Women and Economics (1898), Gilman noted that women would be more independent when tasks such as cooking and cleaning could be (to use a modern term) outsourced, allowing women to work outside of the home. Gilman lectured extensively on a variety of social issues, worked as a magazine editor, and published novels, short stories, collections of poetry, works on sociology, and numerous articles. She was married twice; the second marriage was a happy one, while an incident from the first (unhappy) marriage inspired her most famous work, “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892). After the birth of her only child, Gilman suffered from postpartum depression; with her husband’s support, a doctor called it hysteria and prescribed what was called the rest cure treatment, which involved being kept in seclusion with nothing to do (since she was forbidden to write or paint). The treatment only worsened her depression, which only improved when she became active again, and the experience ultimately resulted in a divorce. The story is partly autobiographical (although Gilman did not deteriorate to the extent that her character does) and examines how society damages a woman’s mental and physical health by denying her the freedom she needs.
Consider while reading:

1. How does the narrator’s description of the wallpaper change? What might the wallpaper represent figuratively: mental illness? Society’s repression of women? Other metaphors? Does the metaphor change as the description changes?
2. In what ways is this story (its setting, its characters, its situation) a product of its time period? In what ways does it transcend its time period?
3. Look at Gilman’s Women and Economics. In what ways does the treatise predict changes in present day society, and is there anything that is inaccurate? Are there changes that she suggests that still have not been made?

Written by Laura Getty