The Yellow Wallpaper E-Book

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

• Herausgeber: Renard Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 36

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

In 1892 a furious Charlotte Perkins Gilman put pen to paper and created the avant-garde feminist work The Yellow Wallpaper as a warning – in this haunting Gothic tale, a woman is confined to a room and forbidden to do anything interesting – and she loses her mind.  In 1887, following a severe nervous breakdown, Gilman had been sent to a leading neurologist, she explains in 'Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper', also included in this volume. He was a 'wise man' who 'put me to bed and applied the rest cure… and sent me home with solemn advice to "live as domestic a life as far as possible"… and "never to touch pen, brush or pencil again" as long as I lived. I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over.'  The Yellow Wallpaper is both a haunting illustration of the treatment of mental health and a chilling Gothic tale, and this new edition makes it ready to enchant another generation of readers.

Leseprobe

The Yellow Wallpaper

charlotte perkins gilman

renard press

Renard Press Ltd

124 City Road

London EC1V 2NX

United Kingdom

[email protected]

020 8050 2928

www.renardpress.com

The Yellow Wallpaper first published in book form in 1899

‘Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper’ first published in 1913

This edition first published by Renard Press Ltd in 2021

Design, notes and edited text © Renard Press Ltd, 2021

The pictures in this volume are reprinted with permission or are presumed to be in the public domain. Every effort has been made to ascertain their copyright status, and to acknowledge this status where required, but we will be happy to correct any errors, should any unwitting oversights have been made, in subsequent editions.

Renard Press is proud to be a carbon positive publisher, meaning we take more carbon out of the air than we put in. For more information see renardpress.com/eco.

All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, used to train artificial intelligence systems or models, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without the prior permission of the publisher.

EU Authorised Representative: Easy Access System Europe – Mustamäe tee 50, 10621 Tallinn, Estonia, [email protected].

contents

The Yellow Wallpaper

Note

Appendix

the yellow wallpaper

It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.

A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate – I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity, but that would be asking too much of fate!

Still, I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it.

Else why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?

John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage.

John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.

John is a physician, and perhaps – I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind – perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.

You see, he does not believe I am sick!

And what can one do?

If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression, a slight hysterical tendency, what is one to do?

My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing.

So I take phosphates, or phosphites – whichever it is – and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until I am well again.

Personally I disagree with their ideas.

Personally I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.

But what is one to do?

I did write for a while, in spite of them, but it doesexhaust me a good deal – having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.

I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus… but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad.

So I will let it alone and talk about the house.

The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people.

There is a delicious garden! I never saw such a garden – large and shady, full of box-bordered paths and lined with long grape-covered arbours with seats under them.

There were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now.

There was some legal trouble, I believe – something about the heirs and co-heirs; anyhow, the place has been empty for years.

That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don’t care; there is something strange about the house – I can feel it.

I even said so to John one moonlit evening, but he said what I felt was a draught, and shut the window.