Reader discussion: The Yellow Wallpaper

Public reader discussion about The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Favorite objects/entities that carry the bulk of the thematic weight in a novel?

By copperThread1972

Has anyone here got a go-to pick for this kind of thing? Like the physical object (or whatever) that kind of carries most of the weight in a novel—examples like the rocket in *Gravity’s Rainbow*, the monster in *Frankenstein*, the white whale in *Moby-Dick*. For me, I’d say Aristotle’s Humors in Eco’s *The Name of the Rose* is a top contender. I think a lot of the adult role models I had growing up really influenced me in a good way: they were funny, but also super skeptical, and that combo has basically stayed with me and steers how I see stuff. So anything that plays with humor as both freeing and kind of unsettling, plus knowledge challenging the big official power structure, really landed. Also, the whole “ancient joke book, but make it a murder weapon” idea is just… honestly hilarious to me.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. What are your thoughts on it?

By snow-story5

I’m not trying to get anyone to do my homework for me—I actually have to deal with that part myself. I just wanna know how other people read it, since I’m honestly not sure what I was supposed to pull from it. I get that there’s supposed to be a feminist angle and that our class will probably zoom in on that and overanalyze it. But when I read it, I didn’t really notice all that. It just felt like a creepy look at someone really starting to lose it, like a scary story through the eyes of an unstable woman who might not be reliable. If you’ve read it, what did you think? Did you go with what it seemed like on the surface, or did you catch a bigger message I missed?

“The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

By coffee-mocha

Really good story, I just can’t seem to find it anywhere. I think BBC Radio 4 did a version of it too—might have been on the Fear on Four series.

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

By cosmicChair98

I picked this up mostly because people keep asking for it, and I really didn’t know anything going in. I’m a bit past halfway and I’m pretty sure I’m not going to keep reading. It’s not that it isn’t good or well written—more that it feels way too real to me. The whole thing is about depression and how the people around you either don’t get it or won’t try to understand what you’re going through. Also, it’s a fictional memoir about Sylvia Plath and her own struggles, so I wasn’t totally expecting it to hit so hard. I’m in a decent place right now, but one paragraph briefly pulled me right back to the worse headspace, and that kind of freaked me out. The book is lovely, though. Maybe I’ll come back to it later… just not now.

Please recommend works like “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman!

By ReadsZenith

I just read the short story and I’m honestly kind of blown away. After that, I ended up looking into the author too, and her life is wild. I’m mainly wondering if anyone has recommendations for other books—fiction or nonfiction—that hit similar themes. And yeah, I’d really recommend this one to anyone who hasn’t read it yet. It gets into things like women’s freedom being limited, the power stuff in relationships that comes from gender roles and how society shapes people, mental health, and more. Also, I’m new here, so hi—I’m excited to be part of this group!

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (45:54)

By BowlEagle

Early feminist horror thing, and it’s read by Heather Ordover. There’s no music or sound effects in the background while she’s reading, which actually makes it feel a bit more intense.

Mental health: The Yellow Wallpaper vs. Jane Eyre

By Wild-Bison

I always love getting to the end of a book and then going online to see what everyone else caught. In *Jane Eyre*, Rochester’s first wife is clearly dealing with something serious, and it really looks like it was treated as just “madness” with no real care. Instead of doing anything like sending her somewhere that could actually help, he keeps her up in the attic and doesn’t get her proper professional treatment, even though he’s loaded. People online basically joked that Rochester would’ve handled Jane the same way if she had post-partum depression or was going through menopause. And then you look at *The Yellow Wallpaper* and yeah… the main character gets put on that “rest cure” by her husband for her post-partum depression. It’s kind of shocking how in both stories the husbands end up taking over how their wives handle their mental health. And a bunch of the same stuff shows up again and again: women being repressed and controlled, mental health getting stigmatized, and the whole infantilization thing. I get that these are older books and the gender roles were messed up back then, but still… Rochester’s first wife ends up burning the house down and dying. And in *Yellow Wallpaper* it feels like the woman is driven to the point where she’s basically trapped in her own breakdown and the husband faints when he walks in. Honestly, thank goodness for feminism, because it’s hard not to wonder how much worse it could’ve been for women who didn’t have a voice. Thoughts?