A review by tomleetang
The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

4.0

I love the slow build to insanity, it's marvelous! I went back to the beginning after I finished and found that I'd forgotten just how lucid the main character was at the start. I know The Yellow Wallpaper is always touted as a protest piece about the oppression of women by (arguably well-meaning in this case) patriarchal figures (e.g. the protagonist's husband, her brother) during the turn of the century, but I think it also stands up well as a look at mental illness generally during that period - how little was known of the mind and the way to treat it so that doctors were giving people these chemicals that were probably making them worse; prescribing cures that were more noxious than salubrious.