Hello Everyone, Welcome to Spring into Short Stories week 2! And today I am featuring The Yellow Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. While reading on the author, this piece of information from Wiki dear, helped me understand the story a tad bit more ~~
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (July 3, 1860 – August 17, 1935) was a prominent American sociologist, novelist, writer of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction, and a lecturer for social reform. She was a utopian feminist during a time when her accomplishments were exceptional for women, and she 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 post-partum depression.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman
When I first started reading this short story, I was not really sure what it was about. I only knew that it came with great recommendations from all the people I know read loads of great short stories. I rarely do any background check on any story I read. I just read a review, like it and then mark the story (if available online) to read. So the narration at first had me a bit confused. Well, I was worried, maybe this is the short story that will make me rethink about my love for this genre? Maybe I was on my short story reading block? I just could not get into the story at all for the 1st few paras. But I need not have worried, the story is not something that will draw u in immediately and is not one of those feel good, lovely stories, that I have made a pattern of reading. This one was a lot different and in a good way.
This story is narrated by a women who is suffering from postpartum depression. Her husband who is a doctor brings her to a ancestral type beautiful house (which he has rented for 3 months), so that she can have a change of scene which might help her in getting better. This narrator of ours is not allowed much outside, inspite of the loveliness of the surroundings and there is another lady in the house who takes care of everything including the child. Our narrator does not get to see her baby as well, but is not really affected by it at all. Apart from a visit from her mother and family, they don't have any visitors either. The room in which she is put up is huge, airy and sparsely furnished with stuff taken from other rooms, but the thing that enlivens narrators imagination is the horrid yellow wallpaper in the room which is partially torn out by the kids who used to live there before them. She takes much interest in it and starts to see the pattern as though it had a life of its own. She is forbidden from writing, but she writes about the paper and other sundry things when her husband and the other lady are not around, and these journals make the story. As she gets obsessed with the paper, it creates a life of its own and what really happens next is for you to find out.
I think if I had known what it was about, i would not have ventured into reading it. I mean think about my situation, I really do not want to read about postpartum depression! But it was not bad, not at all. It is a difficult story, I mean it is hard to sum up my feelings on it. I recommend it wholeheartedly. But this is not because it is my favorite, but because it si something that needs to be read. To be felt, actually.
This will definitely be a story which will stay with me and who knows I might even reread it :)
I hope you guys take time to read it.
"It isn't the big pleasures that count the most; it's making a great deal out of the little ones."— Jean Webster
