This may be a short story, but in now way does this story fall short compared to full length novels.
Let me start by saying (writing) that this reads like a personal diary and I have a strict hit or miss with first person narration, either it comes off as too corny or I’m amazed at the connection I feel to the character.
The first person narrator, which remains nameless, is a recent mother that has moved into a lovely mansion with her husband. She claims to be sick, but her husband and brother, who are physicians recommend plenty of rest and food. Out of sight, out of mind is their motto. She is not to speak, write, or even think of her sickness because it might deplete her health. If she gets angry with her husband, John, she is to learn how to control herself and check her “tendencies”. If she is anything but agreeable then the men don’t want to hear it, she’s meant to stay at home and sit pretty.
The amount of eye rolls I did while reading the first few pages should have been recorded. The story made me react, almost instantly, towards the situation at hand. I never wanted to speak to a character so much as I did with this story. Here was a women baring her soul into her writing, into telling us this very important time in her life, and we were in her safest place — her thoughts, which flowed so beautiful it was hard not to highlight every line.
Adding to her deteriorating mental health, She becomes obsessed with the an ugly yellow wallpaper in her room. She stays up to watch her hallucination take shape within the wallpaper, even seeing a women watching her in the wallpaper. While her husband is out one night, she starts frantically ripping the wallpaper. John returns, only to faint as he sees his wife crawling on the floor claiming she got out of the wallpaper.
I’d say. if this was turned into a move it’d be a psychological thriller. I am in love with this work, not only because it managed to grasp at so many concerning topics in such few pages, but also because it was clear and precise in its execution. I come back to this story every couple of months to check if the impact is still the same and I’m never disappointed — I think the yellow wallpaper is absolutely perfect.
A couple of things that are worth discussing.
First — the nameless women. Why leave the only person that addresses the audience names less? Why do we know so much about her life and inner thought, but not her name? Giving her a name wouldn’t lessen the effect of the story, but forgoing a name makes this women an icon; a representation of the gender. Pure genius.
Second — Men telling women what a women should do. John might have loved and cared deeply for our character, but I don’t think anybody wants that type of love and care. He silenced her in any way, shape, and form he could think of. He used his profession as a physician to invalidate, belittle, and dismiss her. He made her feel as if it were her shortcomings that were to blame, as if she was the burden that he had to carry through life. He put her in a box that only he has the key to open and close. The amount of control John had over her resonates and unfortunately it is a gender thing.
Last — The actual yellow wallpaper. I mean I understand her hatred for the wallpaper, I never liked yellow. Women’s history is neither light nor pleasant to go through, but we’ve all somehow manages to get caught up in the wallpaper at one point in our lives or someone else tries to trap us in there. She wasn’t literally trapped in the yellow wallpaper but she might as well have been. When our character writes she’s defying the men around her and when she finally manages to rip apart the wallpaper, until the very end, she thought she was freeing another women, not herself — let this story sink in.
Read this book if…
Reading iconic feminist works have been on your to-do list.
You want a quick reminder of why reading and writing is a super power.
Rate: 5/5
Time: less than an hour
Book-shelf Worthy: I’m telling you it’s a must of short-stories
Quoteworthy
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage
It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is wise, and because he loves me so.
He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me
John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows that there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him
Sometimes I think there’s a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.
It was on my long list of to be reviewed books, mostly because it’s one of my favorites. The books I’ve already read are actually taking me longer to review since I have to go back and read them, but someone in my inbox told me I should review it so it’s the first on my list now to review.
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe
Another short that I absolutely loved, so why not bundle my two favorites to review.
A Court of Thorns and Roses Series (1-3) by Sarah J. Maas
I read the series last summer and I have to revisit my thoughts of the series, but I did immensely enjoy them. I’m not reviewing the last book, A Court of Silver Flames, because I haven’t read it, yet and I’m sorta hesitating until the next book is released (Mostly because I hear it might be around Azrael, so might as well bundle the two books together).
Throne of Glass Series (1-7) by Sarah J. Maas
literally just finished the last book yesterday and while I did review the first one and wasn’t all that excited to read the rest of the books, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I never doubted Sarah J. Maas (one of the few authors I like off of BookTok), but the first two books were an uphill battle to get through. Though the last books make me emotional unstable…I’ll just save the rest of my comments for the reviews.
this is a brilliantly feminist short story collection! it’s very well-written, and all the characters are deep and developed (even though the stories are so short!!!)
“If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do? … So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas …” ― The Narrator, The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
“We had happy years together, nine of them, the last four she was mine alone. …
Since her second mother was fully as good as the first, better in some ways perhaps; since the father longed for his child and had a right to some of her society; and since the child had a right to know and love her father – I did not mean her to suffer the losses of my youth – this seemed the right thing to do. No one suffered from it but myself. This, however, was entirely overlooked in the furious condemnation which followed. I had ‘given up my child.’ …
I lived without her, temporarily, but why did they think I liked it? She was all I had. …
That was thirty years ago. I have to stop typing and cry as I tell about it. There were years, years, when I could never see a mother and child together without crying, or even a picture of them. I used to make friends with any child I could so as to hold it in my arms for a little. …”
- Charlotte Perkins Gilman on allowing her daughter to live with her father, in The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, An Autobiography (1935) p. 162-164
