The Yellow Wallpaper - Unabridged

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

First published by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in January 1892 in The New England Magazine, The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story of extraordinary power, exploring issues of mental health, the role of women in society and the oppressive nature of the patriarchy. 

Told in the first person, the story follows the plight of a wo

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ft. Raphael Publishing Company
• Release date: Apr 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781949661866

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) was an American author, feminist, and social reformer. Born in Hartford, Connecticut, Gilman was raised by her mother after her father abandoned his family to poverty. A single mother, Mary Perkins struggled to provide for her son and daughter, frequently enlisting the help of her estranged husband’s aunts, including Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. These early experiences shaped Charlotte’s outlook on gender and society, inspiring numerous written works and a lifetime of activism. Gilman excelled in school as a youth and went on to study at the Rhode Island School of Design where, in 1879, she met a woman named Martha Luther. The two were involved romantically for the next few years until Luther married in 1881. Distraught, Gilman eventually married Charles Walter Stetson, a painter, in 1884, with whom she had one daughter. After Katharine’s birth, Gilman suffered an intense case of post-partum depression, an experience which inspired her landmark story “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1890). Gilman and Stetson divorced in 1894, after which Charlotte moved to California and became active in social reform. Gilman was a pioneer of the American feminist movement and an early advocate for women’s suffrage, divorce, and euthanasia. Her radical beliefs and controversial views on race—Gilman was known to support white supremacist ideologies—nearly consigned her work to history; at the time of her death none of her works remained in print. In the 1970s, however, the rise of second-wave feminism and its influence on literary scholarship revived her reputation, bringing her work back into publication.

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cover-image, The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

FORT RAPHAEL PUBLISHING CO.

OAK PARK, ILLINOIS

www.FortRaphael.com

Copyright © 2022 by Ft. Raphael Publishing Company

All Rights Reserved.

Edited by Kevin Theis, Ft. Raphael Publishing Company

Front Cover Artwork and Graphics by Paul Stroili,

Touchstone Graphic Design, Chicago

The Yellow Wallpaper

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.

A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate!

Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.

Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?

John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.

John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.

John is a physician, and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.

You see, he does not believe I am sick!

And what can one do?

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?

My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing.

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.

Personally, I believe that