A review by tiiiger35
The Yellow Wall-Paper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

dark sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Published in 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, perfectly creates a secret journal, of a young woman trapped by the patriarchy & battling postpartum depression, whilst spiralling in to psychosis.

I now better understand the old saying of “you’re driving me up the walls”. Isolated in confinement, prescribed by her doctor husband, she is left to obsess over this hideous, eccentric yellow wallpaper, in a room with bars on the window. The symbolism is striking, a prisoner of the time, like so many other women, controlled by their husbands, misunderstood & misdiagnosed. 

These 15 pages of struggle are based on the authors own experience of postpartum depression, where she also was prescribed “rest”. Sadly in 1935, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and chose to end her own life. In her suicide note she wrote, “choose chloroform over cancer”. Just as the end of the story is up for interpretation, so too is her suicide note. Many debate if she was finally freeing herself of the yellow wallpaper?