The Yellow Wallpaper

Overview

The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.

Written with barely controlled fury after she was confined to her room for "nerves" and forbidden to write, Gilman's pioneering feminist horror story scandalized 19th-century readers with its portrayal of a woman who loses her mind because she has literally nothing to do.

Author Biography

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent American feminist, sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform. She was a utopian feminist and served as a role model for future generations of feminists because of her unorthodox concepts and lifestyle. Her best remembered work today is her semi-autobiographical short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" which she wrote after a severe bout of postpartum psychosis.