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Post by lukemorningstar on Feb 17, 2011 23:58:25 GMT
Hello all. One of the many excuses for not having visited The Vault for so long (and boy what a list there is) is that I am trying my hardest to concentrate on the latest module of an OU Degree in English Lit / Lang. Part of the latest assignment involved reading Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper'
I'm pretty sure we are having to read it in a feminist context as it falls under the category 'Literature and Gender' and the accompanying set text is Alice Walker's 'The Color Purple' !
Anyhow - I thought 'where have I read this recently?' and of course it was in one of the Wordsworth collections (Gothic Short Stories?) I think it is an excellent little descent into madness tale, it's a shame really that I will now have to pull it to pieces for the next essay.
Well that's that - just an excuse to say hello again really. I'm almost afraid to delve into the Pan thread section as I have neglected it so woefully of late.
Love to all anyway
Colin ('Luke')
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Post by Shrink Proof on Mar 16, 2011 21:34:16 GMT
Yep, an excellent "descent into madness" tale. Gilman suffered from depression herself & was treated with a "rest cure", in line with the medical opinion of the day. Basically this consisted of doing as much nothing as possible & then resting afterwards.
Gilman abandoned this after realising that it was simply making her depressive illness worse & later claimed that she wrote the story to point out to her shrink the error of his ways - she even sent him a copy of it. Needless to say, yer average Victorian medic was hardly going to alter his ways in response to a mental patient & moreover a female one at that...
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Post by Johnlprobert on Mar 17, 2011 13:18:01 GMT
Needless to say, yer average Victorian medic was hardly going to alter his ways in response to a mental patient & moreover a female one at that... I think if I'd been a Victorian medic (no average about it, of course) I would have simply devised some new and novel ways to attempt to cure her 'affliction'
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julieh
Crab On The Rampage
One-woman butt-kicking army
Posts: 70
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Post by julieh on Mar 17, 2011 17:17:25 GMT
But it's not just madness - or so I always inferred - it's post-partum depression, though no one had a name for it at the time.
The story mentions keeping her from the baby - not having the stress of looking after it, etc.
Have to go back and read it again, make sure...
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Post by Shrink Proof on Mar 17, 2011 21:14:36 GMT
Actually, I'd forgotten about the baby, but it's a few years since I read the story. The thing that really struck me at the time was that in the story it's the woman's husband who is the doctor treating her. A bad idea in so many ways...
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julieh
Crab On The Rampage
One-woman butt-kicking army
Posts: 70
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Post by julieh on Mar 18, 2011 17:48:07 GMT
The baby is almost included as an afterthought, but it's as much because they simply did not make the connection between childbirth and depression - if anything, chalking it up simply to the need for physical recuperation. But it's still there in the story, and a valid alternative theory.
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julieh
Crab On The Rampage
One-woman butt-kicking army
Posts: 70
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Post by julieh on Oct 19, 2011 18:01:16 GMT
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Post by dem bones on Oct 20, 2011 7:06:27 GMT
All being well, will give this and the HPL one a listen over the weekend.
Stephen King mentions the story very favourably in his notes on his Arthur Machen tribute, N, at back of Just After Sunset. "Can you think of a single successful scary tale that doesn't go back to what we hate and loathe? The best ever example of this might be The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman Perkins. If you ever read it in college, you were probably taught that it's a feminist story. That is true, but it's also a story of a mind crumbling under the weight of it's own obsessive thoughts. That element is also present in N"
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