the yellow wallpaper by charlotte perkins gilman

I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to “live as domestic a life as far as possible,” to “have but two hours’ intellectual life a day,” and “never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again” as long as I lived. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. Such a story ought not to be written, he said it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it.Īnother physician, in Kansas I think, wrote to say that it was the best description of incipient insanity he had ever seen, and–begging my pardon–had I been there?įor many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia–and beyond. When the story first came out, in the New England Magazine about 1891, a Boston physician made protest in The Transcript. In the following piece, Gilman reflected on writing and publishing the piece.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper” (1913)Ĭharlotte Perkins Gilman won much attention in 1892 for publishing “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a semi-autobiographical short story dealing with mental health and contemporary social expectations for women.

The yellow wallpaper by charlotte perkins gilman