Why I wrote the Yellow Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is an exaggerated account of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s personal experiences. In 1887, shortly after the birth of her daughter, Gilman began to suffer from serious depression and fatigue. She was referred to Silas Weir Mitchell, a leading specialist in women’s nervous disorders in the nineteenth century, who diagnosed Gilman with neurasthenia and prescribed a “rest cure” of forced inactivity. Weir Mitchell believed that nervous depression was a result of overactive nerves and ordered Gilman to cease all forms of creative activity, including writing, for the rest of her life. The goal of the treatment was to promote domesticity and calm her agitated nerves.Gilman attempted to endure the “rest cure” treatment and did not write or work for three months. Eventually, she felt herself beginning to go slowly insane from the inactivity and, at one point, was reduced to crawling under her bed holding a rag doll. Unlike the protagonist in her story, Gilman did not reach the point of total madness, but she knew that her deteriorating mental condition was due to the oppressive medical regime that was meant to “cure” her. She abandoned Mitchell’s advice and moved to California in order to overcome her depression on her own. Although Gilman’s attempt was successful, she claimed to suffer from post-traumatic stress from Weir Mitchell’s treatment for the rest of her life. In 1890, Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” in an effort to save other women from suffering the same oppressive treatment. Weir Mitchell and his treatment play a key role in the narrative; in the third section of the text, the protagonist’s husband even threatens to send her to Weir Mitchell in the fall if she does not recover soon.
In 1890, Gilman sent the story to writer William Dean Howells, who submitted it to Horace Scudder, editor of the prestigious magazine, “The Atlantic Monthly.” Scudder rejected the story as depressing material, and returned it to Gilman with a handwritten note that read: “Dear Madam: W. Howells has handed me this story. I could not forgive myself if I made others as miserable as I have made myself! Sincerely Yours, H. E. Scudder.” Eventually the story was published in “The New England Magazine” in May 1892. According to Gilman’s autobiography, she sent a copy of “The Yellow Wallpaper” to Weir Mitchell after its publication. Although she never received a response, she claimed that Weir Mitchell later changed his official treatment for nervous depression as a direct result of her story. Gilman also asserted that she knew of one particular woman who had been spared the “rest cure” as a treatment for her depression after her family read “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
The public reaction to the story was strong, if mixed. In many circles, “The Yellow Wallpaper” was perceived as nothing more than a horror story, stemming from the gothic example of Edgar Allen Poe and Mary Shelley. It was not until the 1970s that the story was also recognized as a feminist narrative worthy of historical and literary scholarship.

Why I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as it appeared in The Forerunner, October 1913

Many and many a reader has asked that.  When the story first came out, in the New England Magazine about 1891, a Boston physician made protest in The Transcript.  Such a story ought not to be written, he said; it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it.

Another physician, in Kansas I think, wrote to say that it was the best description of incipient insanity he had ever seen, and, begging my pardon, had I been there?

Now the story of the story is this:

For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia and beyond.  During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country.  This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to “live as domestic life as far as possible,” to “have but two hours intellectual life a day,” and “never to touch pen, or pencil again” as long as I lived.  This was in 1887.

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.

Then, using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist’s advice to the winds and went to work again – work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite – ultimately recovering some measure of power.

Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” with its embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations or objections to my mural decorations) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad.  He never acknowledged it.

The little book is valued by alienists and as a good specimen of one kind of literature.   It has, to my knowledge, saved one woman from a similar fate so terrifying her family that they let her out into normal activity and she recovered.

But the best result is this.  Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.

With a partner or two:  write your thoughts about each of the underlined words in the article by Gilman.  If you don’t know what a word means (like neurasthenia) look it up!!  Be prepared to share with the class.

Mad:

Incipient Insanity:

Nervous Breakdown:

Melancholia:

Nervous Diseases:

Mental Ruin:

Neurasthenia:

Crazy: