Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Moving Beyond Motherhood in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins G

Since its original publication in The New England Magazine in May 1892 and its subsequent resurrection by modern feminists in the l970s, Charlotte Perkins Gilmans novella, The Yellow wallpaper has gone with varied interpretations. When it was originally written, The Yellow Wallpaper was considered a tale of horror, so horrible in fact, that one editor, Horace Scudder of the Atlantic Monthly, refused the guide because he did not want to make others as miserable as he was when he read it. Even as late as 1971, Gilmans work was anthologized under the category of horror (Kennard 75). It was not until the work was rediscovered and republished in 1973 that modern feminist critics recognized the female hero as a victim of society (Kennard 75). However, The Yellow Wallpaper is more than a fiction with a fictional character it is the story of its creator. Gilman, as well as her heroine, suffered through postpartum depression. She not only had to fight the depression and isolation of be ing a yield but also the social mores of the cadence which did not condone career-minded mothers. Societys prime guardians of the status quo in this instance were the medical exam doctors who found it necessary to treat women who were less than happy in their domestic roles. In her case, the treatment was administered by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell for whom Gilman stated she wrote The Yellow Wallpaper (The backing of CPG 121). Gilman recognized that she needed to escape the confinement of the home before she could gravel a career woman who also happened to be a mother. It was through The Yellow Wallpaper that the transition from homebound mother to career mother began. The feelings she experienced as a new mother were not impertinent those of ma... ...Gilman An Autobiography. New York and London D. Appleton-Century Co. (1935) Rpt. As The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. New York Harper & Row, Colophon Books, 1975. ---. why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper. Charlotte Perkins Gilman A Study of the Short Fiction. Ed. Denise D Knight. New York, Twayne Publishers, 1997. 106-107. Hill, Mary A. Charlotte Perkins Gilman The Making of a Radical Feminist, 1860-1896. Philadelphia Temple UP, 1980. Kennard, dungaree E. Convention Coverage or How to Read Your Own Life. New literary History 13 (Autumn 1981) 69-88. Palis, James., et al. The Hippocratic Concept of Hysteria A transmutation of the Original Texts. Integrative Psychiatry 3.3 (1985) 226-228.Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll The Hysterical Woman Sex fibres and Role Conflict in 19th-Century America, Social Research 39 (Winter 1972) 652-78

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