{"id":1177,"date":"2017-07-11T03:02:06","date_gmt":"2017-07-11T03:02:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/ushistory2os\/chapter\/primary-source-charlotte-perkins-gilman-why-i-wrote-the-yellow-wallpaper-1913\/"},"modified":"2017-07-11T03:02:06","modified_gmt":"2017-07-11T03:02:06","slug":"primary-source-charlotte-perkins-gilman-why-i-wrote-the-yellow-wallpaper-1913","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/rangercollege-ushistory2os\/chapter\/primary-source-charlotte-perkins-gilman-why-i-wrote-the-yellow-wallpaper-1913\/","title":{"raw":"Primary Source: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, \u201cWhy I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper\u201d (1913)","rendered":"Primary Source: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, \u201cWhy I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper\u201d (1913)"},"content":{"raw":"Charlotte Perkins Gilman won much attention in 1892 for publishing \u201cThe Yellow Wallpaper,\u201d a semi-autobiographical short story dealing with mental health and contemporary social expectations for women. In the following piece, Gilman reflected on writing and publishing the piece.<\/em>\n\nMany and many a reader has asked that. When the story first came out, in the\u00a0New England Magazine<\/em>\u00a0about 1891, a Boston physician made protest in\u00a0The Transcript<\/em>. Such a story ought not to be written, he said; it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it.\n\nAnother physician, in Kansas I think, wrote to say that it was the best description of incipient insanity he had ever seen, and\u2013begging my pardon\u2013had I been there?\n\nNow the story of the story is this:\n\nFor many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia\u2013and beyond. 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. 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 \u201clive as domestic a life as far as possible,\u201d to \u201chave but two hours\u2019 intellectual life a day,\u201d and \u201cnever to touch pen, brush, or pencil again\u201d as long as I lived. This was in 1887.\n\nI 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.\n\nThen, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist\u2019s advice to the winds and went to work again\u2013work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite\u2013ultimately recovering some measure of power.\n\nBeing naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote\u00a0The Yellow Wallpaper<\/em>, with its embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations or objections to my mural decorations) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it.\n\nThe little book is valued by alienists and as a good specimen of one kind of literature. It has, to my knowledge, saved one woman from a similar fate\u2013so terrifying her family that they let her out into normal activity and she recovered.\n\nBut the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading\u00a0The Yellow Wallpaper<\/em>.\n\nIt was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.\n\nSource: The Forerunner<\/em> (October, 1913).","rendered":"

Charlotte Perkins Gilman won much attention in 1892 for publishing \u201cThe Yellow Wallpaper,\u201d a semi-autobiographical short story dealing with mental health and contemporary social expectations for women. In the following piece, Gilman reflected on writing and publishing the piece.<\/em><\/p>\n

Many and many a reader has asked that. When the story first came out, in the\u00a0New England Magazine<\/em>\u00a0about 1891, a Boston physician made protest in\u00a0The Transcript<\/em>. Such a story ought not to be written, he said; it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it.<\/p>\n

Another physician, in Kansas I think, wrote to say that it was the best description of incipient insanity he had ever seen, and\u2013begging my pardon\u2013had I been there?<\/p>\n

Now the story of the story is this:<\/p>\n

For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia\u2013and beyond. 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. 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 \u201clive as domestic a life as far as possible,\u201d to \u201chave but two hours\u2019 intellectual life a day,\u201d and \u201cnever to touch pen, brush, or pencil again\u201d as long as I lived. This was in 1887.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist\u2019s advice to the winds and went to work again\u2013work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite\u2013ultimately recovering some measure of power.<\/p>\n

Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote\u00a0The Yellow Wallpaper<\/em>, with its embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations or objections to my mural decorations) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it.<\/p>\n

The little book is valued by alienists and as a good specimen of one kind of literature. It has, to my knowledge, saved one woman from a similar fate\u2013so terrifying her family that they let her out into normal activity and she recovered.<\/p>\n

But the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading\u00a0The Yellow Wallpaper<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.<\/p>\n

Source: The Forerunner<\/em> (October, 1913).<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t

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Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t
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