Hi there. It's Dr. Bernstein, and in this video, the first of a two-part series, I'm
going to give you a little background information on Charlotte Perkins Gilman and her story
"The Yellow Wall-paper," which was first published in 1891.
I want to start by calling your attention to "Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper," an
article Gilman wrote and which came
out in 1913. Gilman mentions that when her story first came out, a doctor said that a
story likes hers "ought not to be written" because "it was enough to drive anyone mad
to read it." Another doctor said "it was the best description of incipient insanity"--the
best description of the early phases of insanity.
Gilman then provides some background information about herself. She describes her depression
and how she was put in the care of "a noted specialist" who applied what was called "the
rest cure," which, as other scholars have noted, consisted of "total bed rest for several
weeks and limited intellectual activity thereafter." As Gilman remarks in the article, she "responded
so promptly" to the treatment that the doctor declared there was nothing really the matter
with her and sent her home and advised her to "live as domestic a life as far as possible"
and to "have but two hours' intellectual life a day" and "never to touch pen, brush, or
pencil again" as long as she lived.
Gilman tells readers that she "obeyed those directions for some three months, and came
so near the borderline of utter mental ruin" and then decided to work--to resume "the normal
life of every human being" and recovered "some measure of power." She eventually went on
to write The Yellow Wall-paper--with "its embellishments and additions," noting that,
unlike the unnamed main character in her story, she "never had any hallucinations."
Towards the end of this brief article, she tells us that she sent the book to her specialist,
but he never responded, though she notes that "years later" someone told her that he admitted
to friends that he altered his method of treatment since reading Gilman's story. Also, Gilman
shares that her story "saved one woman from" a fate like the character
in "The Yellow Wall paper" in that
it
so
terrified her family that they "let her out into normal activity and
she recovered." Her story, she concludes "was not intended
to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy."
So here are 2 questions you can ask yourself when reading "The Yellow Wall-paper"
1. How and why could this literary text save people from enduring a
similar fate? 2. Why might a work of literature rather
than, say, a newspaper or scholarly article or other work of non-fiction be more effective
in terms of opening people's eyes and bringing about change?
Okay, so that's the end of this first installment on Gilman. Head on over to the second installment,
where I help guide you into reading, understanding, and analyzing the story itself.
Take care. Bye.