The Yellow Wallpaper

Originally published in 1892 this new edition, approx. 29 pages, differs from the original in that it's a continual first person narrative, no obvious breaks, rather than a collection of separate journal entries. It reads well, in fact it's easier to read in this format, but if you're studying you might do better with a copy of the original.'The Yellow Wallpaper' is the tale of an anonymous Victorian woman living in a type of confinement in the attic of a rather grand mansion in the country. We learn the woman has recently given birth and her husband John, a physician, seems to love his wife and child but is worried about the state of her mind.John is trying to do the right thing for his wife but is completely misguided due to the era and general attitude towards female mental and physical health.His cure is to deny his wife any type of mental stimulation. She must be quiet and left to rest as much as possible. With nothing to distract her mind the woman falls into a type of insanity in which 'The Yellow Wallpaper' in the attic becomes an obsession. She begins to hallucinate and to visualize characters escaping their imprisonment from behind the eerie, yellow paper. One of those characters is her.Sad, poignant and relevant in this modern day and age while considering the health of women suffering postnatal/postpartum depression.

I first read this story whilst at University studying Literature and came across it again as a friend (similarly studying) said that she had been reading it and enjoyed it. It was free on Kindle so I downloaded it to read it again. I'm so glad I did. This is a brilliant study of a woman slowly losing her mind. We first encounter the female lead as a woman who is "ill" in some mysterious way, although her doctor husband doesn't really think there's anything all that much wrong with her (sounds like one of the doctors at my surgery! He must have been employed in the NHS!) Through the story we discover she's just had a baby but doesn't seem to be able to bear the child near her. Next we find that she's living in an attic room which used to be a children's nursery - or did it? The gnawed bed, torn wallpaper, barred windows and "fixtures" like rings to the wall strike the reader as immediately odd. Children's nursery? Gymnasium? Or padded cell for the keeping of the insane? Insanity is the clear theme in the story as the narrator identifies and then identifies too closely with a mysterious woman who appears to be caged behind the bars of the yellow wallpaper of the room.It's a fabulous story with the woman's progression into insanity clearly charted through the story, and yet it is subtly done. I remember when we studied it at University there was talk of yellow wallpaper being tinted with lead in the late nineteenth century which might have led to the woman's insanity. They also used to colour it with urine too, which smelled as the woman describes in the story - but did not, as far as I know, lead to insanity. Or it could have just been a simple case of post-natal depression. Whatever your interpretation, this is a fabulous story and very easy to read.

This may be a short story but it is a disquieting one to say the least. Based upon the author’s experience in the late 1800’s when diagnosed by a physician of a nervous disease she was prescribed ‘rest cure’ which meant that she was to stay in bed all day and only allowed mental stimulation for two hours a day… this led to a near total mental decline.The story features a young woman who has a baby, although he or she, is kept well ‘off-page’ as the subject who has moved into an old house with a creepy feel to it as she lies in a room with yellow peeling wallpaper.The journal entries written by the woman in the bed, written in secret to hide them from her physician husband, who has diagnosed her with a nervous disease and banned her from leaving the house or having any mental stimulation.Alone in the room the woman sees first patterns and then more disturbing things in the yellow on the wall which mirror the stretching and then the breaking of her mind although the ending is cleverly left open to interpretation.The author wrote the story to warn others against rest cures but it has come to be viewed as one of the earliest examples of feminist writing and I can’t disagree. Somehow you can’t imagine a healthy man struggling with a new role in life being told to go to his room until he felt better!!This is one of those stories that make me truly grateful that I was born when I was!

Well what can I say. This was a disturbing read but equally interesting. I love books where you need to read between the lines and not many authors can achieve this. The woman clearly had mental health issues, possibly post natal depression and due to being set in a earlier era....she was locked in a bedroom to 'rest'. You could clearly see her progression into insanity as you read on.It was a clever book and although a quick read (I read in an hour with a cup of tea), it leaves you pondering about it for hours. Definitely disturbing to think of the lack of help there used to be over mental health all those years ago (still now I suppose) but hopefully we have gotten over the locking up stage. And the wallpaper!! Yes that is very cleverly done and chilling! A good read!