The Yellow Wallpaper
Mar. 27th, 2010 11:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
emma_in_dreamI am glad I chose a short story for March. As always, the run up to Swancon (the local con) has been frantic. I have been getting some things together for the art show, completing my Down Under Fan Fund report, and getting ready to represent Aussiecon at the show.
So, a short story was a good choice. My copy came in an anthology with some other short stories, an excerpt from *Herland* and excerpts from her economics writing. I’d read *Herland* previously, enjoyed it, and her economics writing was background theory in some areas of women’s history. Though I must say I remembered her economics argument being mostly about industrialisation devaluing female work the domestic sphere and turning them from producers to consumers.
Anyway, long digression, I like *The Yellow Wallpaper*. I like it even though it is not terribly well written. It is as though she just had to blurt things out onto paper, and does so, even though it means her sentences are bald and straightforward.
Gilman Perkins is a propagandist more than a great artist, but she definitely hit a nerve with this one. *The Yellow Wallpaper* terrifies me. The horrible details accreting one by one, starting with the gothic house and the rings on the walls (for chains? for another mad woman in the attic?).
Her husband is sketchily drawn but of course he is simply the Patriarch, just as his sister is Patriarchy’s Forewoman. The horror comes from her being trapped, unable to do anything meaningful.
And, to digress again, who would have thought that Gilman Perkins would be the one to be remembered today? In the 1880s and 1890s it must have seemed that what’s-his-name, the doctor who treated her, was a well respected specialist and she was a hack writer. Now he is known only because of his ill-fated attempt to force her into total inactivity.
So, a short story was a good choice. My copy came in an anthology with some other short stories, an excerpt from *Herland* and excerpts from her economics writing. I’d read *Herland* previously, enjoyed it, and her economics writing was background theory in some areas of women’s history. Though I must say I remembered her economics argument being mostly about industrialisation devaluing female work the domestic sphere and turning them from producers to consumers.
Anyway, long digression, I like *The Yellow Wallpaper*. I like it even though it is not terribly well written. It is as though she just had to blurt things out onto paper, and does so, even though it means her sentences are bald and straightforward.
Gilman Perkins is a propagandist more than a great artist, but she definitely hit a nerve with this one. *The Yellow Wallpaper* terrifies me. The horrible details accreting one by one, starting with the gothic house and the rings on the walls (for chains? for another mad woman in the attic?).
Her husband is sketchily drawn but of course he is simply the Patriarch, just as his sister is Patriarchy’s Forewoman. The horror comes from her being trapped, unable to do anything meaningful.
And, to digress again, who would have thought that Gilman Perkins would be the one to be remembered today? In the 1880s and 1890s it must have seemed that what’s-his-name, the doctor who treated her, was a well respected specialist and she was a hack writer. Now he is known only because of his ill-fated attempt to force her into total inactivity.
