Chargement
Informations sur le livre
The Yellow Wallpaper: Classic Tales Edition
Écrit par Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Raconté par B.J. Harrison
Actions du livre
Commencer à écouterDescription
It’s just a hideously papered room. At least, that’s what everybody else thought. But when a woman suffering from a nervous condition is housed in the room, things begin to surface from the wallpaper.
Things that seem familiar, but are best left quiet and undisturbed...
Actions du livre
Commencer à écouterInformations sur le livre
The Yellow Wallpaper: Classic Tales Edition
Écrit par Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Raconté par B.J. Harrison
Description
It’s just a hideously papered room. At least, that’s what everybody else thought. But when a woman suffering from a nervous condition is housed in the room, things begin to surface from the wallpaper.
Things that seem familiar, but are best left quiet and undisturbed...
À propos de l'auteur
CG![]()
Avis
This edition has a version "translated" into modern English, as well as the original in an appendix. There are also two scholarly essays, and some additional statements from the author about the women's right to vote and why she wrote The Yellow Wallpaper.
... how do I even review something like this.
First of all, it's a masterpiece.
Secondly, it chilled me to my core.
Charlotte Perkins-Gilman wrote a feminist psychological thriller and horror story. Perhaps one of the first. And one of the greatest.
The thing that I admire about this story is that it was able to terrify me on two levels. It has layers of social implications and it's very complex.
I'll have to read it again some day, when it doesn't terrify me so much.
I don't think I can say with any conviction, how much this book affected me, but it'll stay with me for the rest of my life.
First of all, it's a masterpiece.
Secondly, it chilled me to my core.
Charlotte Perkins-Gilman wrote a feminist psychological thriller and horror story. Perhaps one of the first. And one of the greatest.
The thing that I admire about this story is that it was able to terrify me on two levels. It has layers of social implications and it's very complex.
I'll have to read it again some day, when it doesn't terrify me so much.
I don't think I can say with any conviction, how much this book affected me, but it'll stay with me for the rest of my life.
A creepy psychological horror with subtle feminism undertones. I truly enjoyed this one, because it showed how helpless women of the past were in certain situations, governed by their fathers, husbands, and brothers.
** spoiler alert ** This is a fantastic insight into the mind of someone who has been suffering from undiagnosed post-partum depression. Her husband believes she just needs rest and confines her to a room with yellow wallpaper. The result of this isolation is a mental breakdown.
Read this short story in 1 sitting. It is the story of a woman's descent into madness following the birth of her child and the subsequent enforced rest. She is taken to a country house to recover and spends most of her time confined to a room with horrid yellow wallpaper. The description of the room makes me think what happens to the woman has happened in the past. A creepy, thought provoking read.
A journalized descent into a woman's madness . . . brought on yellow wallpaper.A quick, rather creepy sort of read.
I feel like a cheater for counting this as a book; it is more like a short story. The story is only about 30 pages, and the afterword is as long as the story itself. As one of the few feminist pieces from the 19th century, The Yellow Wallpaper is a chilling psychological account of what both physical and mental isolation and imprisonment could do to a woman. The novel describes vividly the power structure and dynamics of the typical husband-wife relationship at that time and how they attribute to female depression and madness. A powerful piece of literature and social commentary.
This story is interesting because it has many depths. This woman is trapped by something… Is she trapped by some illness? Or could it be her husband and those around her? What about her psyche? Or by the tiny room, with the ugly and haunting wallpaper, where she spends the majority of her time in?
Those around her only make this situation worse. Her husband, the head of the household is also a Doctor, making her situation even more pitiful. I’m slightly curious to see this story from the perspective of her husband, would it show him in the same light or would we see another side? You can see his love for her, so why then does it look like he is trapping her in this house.
The wallpaper is another interesting aspect of the story, the obsession behind the ugliness of it. This woman has strong observation skills that have been with her since childhood. This could be telling of extreme intelligence or autistic/OCD traits which would explain the unexplained “sickness”. I also think that when someone is depressed it can escalate by staying inside and being inactive. Sometimes the best cure is actually forcing yourself to do the things you don’t want to. All the people involved in her caretaking only placate her.
It only gets more interesting when she sees a woman trapped behind the pattern in the wallpaper. Is this a reflection of how she feels in her current condition? Is the trapped by those around her or just getting more paranoid?
This story ended up giving me the creeps. The description of the wallpaper woman crawling and shaking the pattern in front of her seemed right out of a horror movie. The descriptions gave me some very ghostly images and the idea of being trapped in a room days on end is the perfect setting for horrific imaginings. I really love it because it’s not the typical scary story, almost like the creepy parts are underneath and need to be dug up. The story really plays with reality, what is real and what is merely imagination. What is real to someone could be a trick of the mind and the start of crazy thoughts. How easy it is to lose ones sanity.
Those around her only make this situation worse. Her husband, the head of the household is also a Doctor, making her situation even more pitiful. I’m slightly curious to see this story from the perspective of her husband, would it show him in the same light or would we see another side? You can see his love for her, so why then does it look like he is trapping her in this house.
The wallpaper is another interesting aspect of the story, the obsession behind the ugliness of it. This woman has strong observation skills that have been with her since childhood. This could be telling of extreme intelligence or autistic/OCD traits which would explain the unexplained “sickness”. I also think that when someone is depressed it can escalate by staying inside and being inactive. Sometimes the best cure is actually forcing yourself to do the things you don’t want to. All the people involved in her caretaking only placate her.
It only gets more interesting when she sees a woman trapped behind the pattern in the wallpaper. Is this a reflection of how she feels in her current condition? Is the trapped by those around her or just getting more paranoid?
This story ended up giving me the creeps. The description of the wallpaper woman crawling and shaking the pattern in front of her seemed right out of a horror movie. The descriptions gave me some very ghostly images and the idea of being trapped in a room days on end is the perfect setting for horrific imaginings. I really love it because it’s not the typical scary story, almost like the creepy parts are underneath and need to be dug up. The story really plays with reality, what is real and what is merely imagination. What is real to someone could be a trick of the mind and the start of crazy thoughts. How easy it is to lose ones sanity.
This was shorter than I expected.. But interesting.. I loved the visuals I got from her description of the creeping woman behind the pattern in the wallpaper... And to learn ultimately that it was herself she saw trapped behind it.. Creepy.. And sad.. I enjoyed it!
I first read this piece for an English class a couple years ago and it’s been with me ever since. It’s a fairly short read but when it’s over it still haunts you and leaves you chilled to the bone. I think that this story depicts how someone with a mental illness could feel when their illness isn’t validated and properly cared for.
A very quick read. The VMC edition I had included an Afterword which was almost as long as the book itself!I enjoyed this book (short story, or at most a novella). Written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, an early feminist, it recounts a wife's descent into madness. The main character is the wife mentioned above; it is told in the first person, and the reader is not entirely convinced of what is real and what is in the narrator's mind.This was a disturbing book - I felt helpless, like the narrator. A good book.
A woman, confined to an upper-story bedroom in a creepy house for a "rest cure" following a mental breakdown, becomes obsessed with the hideous yellow wallpaper.I have read this story a few times and I always forget how creepy and chilling it is, especially the final image. Gilman has a knack of pointing out the horrific things that society does to women. In this story, depriving the narrator of her means of expressing herself and stimulating her brain is just as terrifying as confining her to her room. I believe the narrator was suffering from undiagnosed postpartum depression.Reread in 2015.
Interesting read from a different era. Not sure how I really feel even after 2 months. I like dark and books about insanity but this one was a bit out there.
Brilliant story of madness! Fascinating piece for its historical value as Ms. Gilman is protesting the common treatment at the time the story was written given to women who were suffering "nervous" disorders. A cautionary tale but extremely frightening because of its reality.
Even as short as it is, still too long. It would be more compelling as a paragraph or two. Probably as highly rated as it is because of its position within feminist literature, which is fine and understandable (and moderately interesting); I just didn't care for it--I found it more comical than anything else.
Short and über creepy, this story is told from the point-of-view of a woman staying in the country with her husband. She’s recovering from an unnamed illness (possibly post-partum depression) and her husband has set her up in a room by herself. The walls are covered with an ugly yellow wallpaper and as the story progresses she becomes obsessed with it. She begins to believe she can see a woman lurking behind the designs in the wallpaper. The longer she remains confined to the room the deeper she descends into her madness, taking the reader along for the ride. The story was published in 1892 and is often called one of the first pieces of feminist literature. It’s a chilling look at the “treatment” women were often given and the lack of freedom they were permitted in these situations. It’s also just a great scary story, so there’s something for everyone.
I think that The Yellow Wallpaper is a really good short story. The way that the plot unravels on it's way to the ending is really skillful. I'm also impressed by the fact that the author went through a similar situation and was able to find her way out of it! Knowing that the author wrote from experience added a lot of credibility to the story as a whole.
With still so many unresolved questions, The Yellow Wallpaper keeps its power.Was the doctor husband totally without bad intentions?If no, why did he not respond to his wife's simple request NOT to stay in the upstairs nursery with the awful peeling wallpaper?Did her writing actually cause her to become more upset? or was this a thing he just wanted to control?If she could make it outside for daily walks, why does she keep insisting that her husband would not allow her to DO anything?She could have gardened! fed birds! found a pet! followed the wildlife! dug a pond!So this descent into madness felt more like the choices of an unstable mind rather than an intent by her husband and his sister to drive her insane.
The Yellow Wall-Paper was one of the first short novels that I read. I made the exception because of its status on the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. I am glad that I read it. It is the perfect length for a cup of tea and the price is right. It is a part of Project Gutenberg, and an eBook can be obtained free of charge.
The story is a series of journal entries told in first person by the narrator, a nameless woman who is locked in a room, after being diagnosed as ‘nervously depressed’ by her physician husband, John. I believe that John acts out of love, although questionable at times. His treatment of his wife is so oppressive, that it seems that the woman may have created her own sense of freedom, although it is seen as psychotic.
The journal entries describe the woman’s descent into psychosis with the wallpaper in the room where she is locked in her own thoughts. The ending of the story has an odd, but feminist triumph of sorts. I can see that there are many ways that this story, albeit short, could be interpreted. The bottom line is that there is a lot of punch in this short little ditty.
The story is a series of journal entries told in first person by the narrator, a nameless woman who is locked in a room, after being diagnosed as ‘nervously depressed’ by her physician husband, John. I believe that John acts out of love, although questionable at times. His treatment of his wife is so oppressive, that it seems that the woman may have created her own sense of freedom, although it is seen as psychotic.
The journal entries describe the woman’s descent into psychosis with the wallpaper in the room where she is locked in her own thoughts. The ending of the story has an odd, but feminist triumph of sorts. I can see that there are many ways that this story, albeit short, could be interpreted. The bottom line is that there is a lot of punch in this short little ditty.
Amazing, painful, frightening. TV Tropes even refers to this short story from 1892... (especially in the "Room Full of Crazy" trope...)
A woman and her husband and young child rent a house for a few months while their house is being renovated. They stay in an attic bedroom with confusingly-patterned yellow wallpaper. The woman, already dealing with mental health problems, slowly becomes delusional due to her husband keeping her in the room with nothing to do but stare at the wallpaper every day.I was expecting this story to speak to me much more than it actually did. I know what the generally accepted interpretation of this story is - the woman's husband is controlling and abusive and she projects that feeling on to the wallpaper as she goes crazy. However, if the reader is seeing things only from the woman's perspective, and the woman is definitely delusional by the end, and thus an unreliable narrator, who are we to say when exactly she turned delusional? I'm certainly among the first to point out when a man is too controlling of a woman, but I think if the woman was delusional and paranoid from before the narration begins this story would look exactly the same.The downside of listening to this story as an audiobook is that I had no sense of time passing. There were no dates or noticeable breaks in the narration, so one minute they are moving into the house for 3 months and the next minute they are a couple days from moving back home. The lack of sense of time might have had something to do with my interpretation. I did listen to it twice but that did not seem to help.
Never read this as a kid, realized I probably should. An interesting perspective on interior decorating.
If you've any appreciation for short stories that stand the test of time, then you're sure to like this one.
Gilman's story of woman in a room with yellow wallpaper sounds about as dry and bland as one can imagine, which is precisely why one needs to read it to see how dangerous preconceived ideas can be.
Gilman's narrator is bubbly and energetic initially, then changes begin to settle in -changes which leave her state of mind on the precipice of ruination. Does she manage to hold herself together? Or, does she slip into horrifying madness?
Gilman's story of woman in a room with yellow wallpaper sounds about as dry and bland as one can imagine, which is precisely why one needs to read it to see how dangerous preconceived ideas can be.
Gilman's narrator is bubbly and energetic initially, then changes begin to settle in -changes which leave her state of mind on the precipice of ruination. Does she manage to hold herself together? Or, does she slip into horrifying madness?
Interesting story told in journal fashion of a woman compelled to take a rest cure by her p hysician hu s band and the result forced inactivity has on her mind.
I doubt I will ever read again such powerful descriptions of wallpaper. What vivid writing!
A re-read of a classic. ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is a spooky-as-hell ghost story which maintains a nice ambiguity all the way through – but it’s also a raw, effective protest against the infantilization of women and even a call to arms regarding awareness of mental illness. Gilman is great at leaving what doesn’t need to be said unsaid. There are no ‘morals’ stated here, but her stance is clear.
(And was that room ever a ‘playroom’ or ‘gymnasium’? Oh hell no.)
(And was that room ever a ‘playroom’ or ‘gymnasium’? Oh hell no.)
It starts so simply...a couple is on vacation. She is ill and taking a rest in the country. But is that true? She is scared, and trapped, and not allowed to leave. Her fear is palpable. Or, maybe, she is an extremely unreliable narrator?
This was an okay short story about a woman’s decent into psychosis. It’s written in the form of a diary entry but there are no dates or times. Just a long stream of consciousness. Quick read.
Wow! How is it I've never run across this before? Gilman's writing and characterization is superb. This is definitely one to go back to again and again.
This was a short story told from the point of view of a woman who was suffering what we would today call postpartum depression. Her husband and family force her to stay on bed rest in a strange room where she slowly loses her mind based on her surroundings - especially the wallpaper in the room. While short, the story does a nice job making the reader feel for the main character, and gives us a glimpse of what it might be like to suffer from that type of depression.