CLASSIC READS: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

At the end of the last year, I´ve proudly announced my new reading project: CLASSIC READS. It is a project in the making for many years, but half-way abandoned due to the lack of time and the many reading temptations I am giving up to during my day. 

My post was supposed to push my commitment and determine me to follow a plan. Which partially happened, as I set up a list and read some books from the list, but still unable to spend enough time reviewing it lately.

But now I am happily breaking the ice and posting my first - hopefully not the last - post from my round the year affair with classical reads.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short - less than 50 pages - novella published in 1892 in The New England Magazine. A bit over ten years later, the author will explain why she wrote the story, largely but not completely inspired by her own story. 

The protagonist of the novella, a woman, writes about her life during a ´retreat´ in a summer home aimed at restoring her mental health. The first person account describes her struggle with the lack of intellectual stimulation, while being forced largely to limit her daily schedule to home-based activities as per the doctor´s advice. And the under-stimulated brain will find her remedy in a Gothic fantasma of women hiding under the decayed wallpaper in her bedroom. 

The world the character belongs to - as the author herself - is a world with strict gender roles and with ´diagnosis´ that are far from following a scientific pathway. Instead, doctors are trying to maintain the social and gender-based distinctions, which was a generic tendency in women´s mental health until few decades ago.

The book raises issues relevant until today and the discussion is always interesting for several aspects. 

From the literary point of view, the episodes of the wallpaper ghosts are the best in terms of the visual effects of the descriptions. I was able to see the shadows and the aparitions from behind the wallpaper in the front of my eyes, hence my reading and re-reading of those passages more than once.

It was a short yet thoughtful read I am glad I had the chance to read it. It just opened up my interest to advance through my classical reads and happily share it on the blog as well.