Herland and The Yellow Wallpaper (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

By Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Lori M. Campbell

This volume pairs two of Charlotte Perkins Gilmans most famous works, Herland (1915) and "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892). Herland, a utopian novel, sketches Gilmans model of a society governed, inhabited, and perpetuated solely by women; while "The Yellow Wallpaper," typically categorized as a Gothic or horror story, dramatizes a young wifes postpartum descent into madness. These powerful examples of Gilmans fiction illuminate, perhaps even more effectively than her nonfiction, the complexity and passion of her mission for egalitarianism among the sexes. Reading these works today also helps us to define the scope of Gilmans progressiveness, revealing how far we have come as well as how far we have yet to travel to make true equality a requisite condition of human life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barnes & Noble
• Release date: Sep 1, 2009
• ISBN: 9781411430235

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in 1860 in Connecticut. Her father left when she was young and Gilman spent the rest of her childhood in poverty. As an adult she took classes at the Rhode Island School of Design and supported herself financially as a tutor, painter and artist. She had a short marriage with an artist and suffered serious postnatal depression after the birth of their daughter. In 1888 Gilman moved to California, where she became involved in feminist organizations. In California, she was inspired to write and she published The Yellow Wallpaper in The New England Magazine in 1892. In later life she was diagnosed with breast cancer and died by suicide in 1935.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

FROM the 1890s until her death in 1935, Charlotte Perkins Gilman stood as one of the most important and tireless advocates for women’s rights in America. She wrote, lectured, and published her own magazine, often while struggling as a single mother and working woman when neither was socially acceptable. Although appreciated as a feminist before the term was coined, Gilman identified herself in broader terms, seeing economic independence for women as the means to happiness and progress for all people. This volume from Barnes & Noble uniquely pairs two of her most famous works, The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) and Herland (1915), both acclaimed in Gilman’s lifetime. Typically categorized as a Gothic or horror story, The Yellow Wallpaper dramatizes a young wife’s postpartum descent into madness, while Herland, a utopian novel, sketches Gilman’s model of a society governed, inhabited, and perpetuated solely by women. These powerful examples of her fiction illuminate, perhaps even more effectively than her nonfiction, the complexity and passion of her mission for change. Reading these works today also helps us to define the scope of Gilman’s progressiveness, revealing how far we have come as well as how far we have yet to travel to make true equality a requisite condition of human life.

Born in Hartford, Connecticut, on July 3, 1860, Charlotte Anna Perkins may have inherited her intellectual impulses from her father’s family, which included activist and author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-96). While his specific reason remains unclear, linguist and librarian Frederick Perkins left home not long after a doctor told his wife, Mary, that having another baby after Charlotte might kill her. The Perkinses permanently separated in 1869 and divorced in 1873. Frederick supported the family sporadically, paying for Charlotte to attend the Rhode Island School of Design in 1878. Meeting artist Charles Walter Stetson a few years later, she initially declined his marriage offer, reasoning, I felt strongly . . . that I ought to forego the more intimate personal happiness for complete devotion to my work.¹ A professional setback for him changed her mind and she became Mrs. Stetson in 1884. Her diary indicates she approached her role as wife with the same energy she gave to work, but even before the birth of daughter Katharine Beecher Stetson in May 1885, Gilman fell into a depression that would recur throughout the rest of her life. Dr. S. Weir Mitchell prescribed his now-famous rest cure, the inspiration for The Yellow Wallpaper, which Gilman conceived in California in 1891, three years after she divorced Stetson. Spending much of the 1890s at large in America and abroad, Gilman published her masterwork Women and Economics in 1898, arguing that the emancipation of women from economic bonds to men would improve society as a whole. Gilman married her cousin George Houghton Gilman in 1900 and they started a publishing company to produce The Forerunner (1909-16), a journal to which she was sole contributor. She wrote almost constantly in her later years, even after a breast cancer diagnosis in 1932 and Houghton’s sudden death in 1934. In the final chapter of The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: An Autobiography, she incorporates her suicide note, which ends, I have preferred chloroform to cancer.² Dying as she lived—on her own terms—Charlotte went to sleep with a chloroform-soaked cloth on her face on July 25, 1935. Her legacy includes the texts composing this volume, arguably her most powerful contributions as an author and sociologist.

First published by The New England Magazine in January 1892, and originally hyphenating Wall-paper, The Yellow Wallpaper exhibits defining traits of women’s supernatural writing, which as Claire Stewart explains in Feminist Readings of Victorian Popular Texts, differs from that of their male counterparts. At the time, men set the rules for what one could say in print and received less scrutiny for inappropriate material. Although male writers used the Gothic to confront volatile issues, woman’s place in society made the genre especially suited for them to subversively voice uncomfortable opinions. The Yellow Wallpaper provides a prime example as Gilman imaginatively recreates her own nervous collapse as a young wife and mother. Being restricted to a room at the top of a vacation house, and told in no uncertain terms not to write, Jane, the narrator, fixates on the hideous wallpaper until she perceives a female figure emerging from behind it.

While the wallpaper woman is not literally a ghost, she symbolizes Jane’s enchained spirit, an idea supported by her descriptions of the bars on the windows of a room that may have once been a nursery, and also the admonition against what she feels is a natural and life-sustaining activity: writing. Before the end the woman behind the paper becomes many women, representing Gilman’s view of herself and her sisters fighting to break free from economic, social, and artistic oppression. Lynette Carpenter and Wendy K. Kolmar point out in Haunting the House of Fiction: Feminist Perspectives on Ghost Stories by American Women that in female supernatural tales women characters usually feel kinship with the ghosts in their houses and take action based on their warnings about domesticity. Certainly the great old house with its locked rooms, a stock Gothic element, offers an apt backdrop for a story of female oppression, placing the character in a domestic space that is chaotic, confining, and ultimately drives one mad.

In this way Gilman writes in the tradition of Mary Shelley (1797-1851), whose Frankenstein (1818) is widely viewed as the model for Gothic fiction. Although Shelley’s protagonist is male, critics such as Ellen Moers, Marilyn Guall, Sandra M. Gilbert, and Susan Gubar interpret Frankenstein as a birth myth, citing motherhood as a main theme and Shelley’s guilt over personal child losses as inspiration. Both Shelley and Gilman use a doubling technique, a key trait of the Gothic, to illustrate the idea of a self being torn apart by internal and external forces. Victor Frankenstein scientifically gives birth to a being that personifies his darker self, a creature that torments his father in response to being rejected by him. Likewise, the protagonist in Gilman’s work, whose biological maternity effectively imprisons her, brings to life a creature in her own image that gains power over its creator. The wallpaper woman gets up and moves about in a way Jane cannot, torturing the mother whose mental instability keeps her apart from her actual child.

Dr. Frankenstein’s creation exists as a function of intellectual curiosity, while Jane’s stems from a more emotional source, yet their motivations are parallel: both create out of a desire for power. As a man, Victor already possesses the means to scientifically create and to run when his creation goes awry. As a woman who wants (and needs) to write, Jane mirrors both Gilman and Shelley, bringing to life a version of herself with the power to do what she cannot: leave the house, i.e., her socially prescribed role. The main difference between Jane and Victor Frankenstein is undeniably linked to sex. Being male, Victor’s overreaching means he seeks a god-like status; as a woman, the next level for Jane is to escape being female, to control her own life and participate in society. Rather than playing God, she is playing male, imagining life without the chains that come with being a wife and mother, and which her husband uses to keep her from venting emotion through writing. Given this reading, the wallpaper, widely viewed as an emblem for writing paper, is the womb, or in Shelleyean terms, the laboratory where Jane’s alternate selves come alive.

Frankenstein ends with the monster mourning his father after a lengthy chase, meaningfully instigated by the doctor’s refusal to make a bride for his creation. Gilman provides a more ambiguous resolution for Jane, who becomes her creation, creeping over her husband who lies on the floor in a feminine swoon. Gilman grants Jane a measure of freedom, yet the rope and the window suggest her independence comes at great cost, either in the form of her sanity or her life, depending on one’s reading of the scene. Gilman predicts the toll of oppression on women and men, an idea pervading contemporary feminist works of the period, most notably Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening. In her afterword to the 1973 Feminist Press edition of The Yellow Wallpaper, which effectively resurrected Gilman after a fifty-year period of scholarly disinterest, Elaine R. Hedges identifies the story’s conclusion as a heroic defeat. By so vividly dramatizing such destructive consequences for Mitchell’s rest cure, Gilman, who received the treatment firsthand, makes what Ann J. Lane calls the first major act of defiance in her entire life . . . against . . . rules that were imposed upon her with difficulty but that she nevertheless accepted as her own.³ When Jane exits the story creeping along as if one with the wallpaper, she is destroyed, but in telling her story—indeed in letting Jane tell her own story—Gilman succeeds in bringing awareness to troubling aspects of female experience at the time and for all time.

This is not to suggest Gilman dismissed or disdained marriage or motherhood in theory or practice; quite the opposite was true. In her Autobiography, she names a mistaken marriage as the source of her psychological breakdown, but blames herself and her driving ambition, not Stetson, nor her daughter. Her seemingly solid second marriage with Houghton confirms she did not forsake the institution, and her descriptions of Kate’s childhood show Gilman’s sincere desire to be a good mother. In fact, her social vision developed around her belief in the importance of motherhood. She saw children as the world’s best hope but eschewed the notion that every woman held a talent for or interest in motherhood. Taken to task by the press after sending Kate to live with Stetson and his new wife, Gilman’s close friend Grace Channing, she felt the sting of being called an unnatural mother. Gilman poignantly defends her action in her Autobiography, saying, No one suffered from it but myself. This, however, was entirely overlooked in the furious condemnation that followed. . . . I lived without her, temporarily, but why did they think I liked it? She was all I had.⁴

In her fiction Gilman’s views on motherhood and childrearing, which were far ahead of her time, appear most explicitly in Herland (1915), the story of male adventurers who stumble upon a society composed solely of women. Each man displays a different attitude toward the experience as the Herland tutors teach the history, politics, and value system of a culture where motherhood is a religion and the highest social service. As Carol Farley Kessler notes in Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Her Progress Toward Utopia with Selected Writings, Gilman gives Terry, Jeff, and Van individual personality types to expose male misinformation regarding women’s ways. Each man sees woman either as an object of pleasure to conquer (Terry), of protection to idolize (Jeff), or of scientific study to explain (Van). In a page from Women and Economics, the men embody Gilman’s view of the ways men and women forge relationships. Terry provides the best evidence throughout the novel, but especially when he first approaches Alima with the offer of a necklace, which, according to Van, she views more in the manner of an intent boy playing a fascinating game than of a girl lured by an ornament. Besides defining Herland values, the scene exposes the men’s ignorance and their assumptions about what women want, especially after Alima runs off with the necklace. Terry’s response, The men of this country must be good sprinters. . . . Women like to be run after, shows he clearly does not get the point, but the reader surely would. Terry never learns his lesson, making repeated, similar mistakes, including the ultimate act of violence that results in his expulsion from Herland.

In her introduction to Gilman’s With Her in Ourland: The Sequel to Herland, Mary Deegan sees the interactions of Ellador and Van in both works as a discourse between feminism and patriarchy. In Herland the women ask pointed questions and take notes, while keeping their opinions about the outside world to themselves, though Gilman’s views on what the Herlanders call a bi-sexual culture are easily detected. From the first, the women treat the men like children, carrying them manfully and administering anesthesia. The men are kept in what Terry calls a regular fortress where they are cooped up as helpless as a bunch of three-year-old orphans, and . . . taught what [the women] think is necessary—whether we like it or not. Their apparent escape temporarily brings a joyous sense of freedom, confirming Gilman’s message about domestic imprisonment for women in her own land, in a tables-turned approach that pervades Herland. Deegan distinguishes Gilman from the Social Darwinists of her time, since as a cultural feminist Gilman felt women were the founders of human society, [and] . . . subsequently lost their power only after men gained ascendancy over them.⁵ Gilman does not so much envision an alternative to her own society in Herland as she seeks to restore women to what she sees as their rightful place. With motherhood as the guiding principle, the novel transforms the biological trait that subordinates and limits women in the real world into the source of their power in Herland.

In turn, the men who visit there often find themselves in stereotypically feminine roles, particularly in terms of Gilman’s abiding concern, work. After marriage, the men are at leisure while, as Terry puts it, their alleged or so-called wives . . . [go] right on with their profession as foresters. While having no special learnings the men want to do something, if only to pass the time. Van says they feel uncomfortable at having no sense of—perhaps it may be called possession of the women, who see themselves as Mothers and People, not as wives or lovers. Not unexpectedly, given more open twenty-first-century attitudes, one of the most interesting aspects of Herland is the hesitation of Ellador, Celis, and especially Alima about consummating their marriages. For Gilman, marriage, or at least a certain type of marriage, perpetuated female dependence. Believing the sexual relationship to be bound by economics, Gilman saw marriage very often itself being a legally enshrined version of prostitution.⁶ In her own life she struggled with the conflict between her ideals and the realities of marriage, along with her recognition of the necessity to earn a living. Gilman’s view of physical intimacy shapes the responses of the Herland brides to their grooms’ increasing pressure. Only one, Celis, apparently succumbs to her husband, Jeff, whom Van describes as the one who feels most at home in Herland. Tellingly the woman who finds the closest thing to true partnership is Ellador, who marries Van, a sociologist and, as the narrator, Gilman’s spokesperson.

Throughout her life Charlotte Perkins Gilman strove to realize daunting goals based on her vision of progress, not only for women, but also for Humanity. Her unwavering belief in freedom for all comes alive as she takes the reader into the crumbling mind of a young mother in The Yellow Wallpaper, then into a land where empowered women thrive without men in Herland. Gilman’s own life remains inextricably fused with her work, both fiction and nonfiction, so that a volume such as this one provides special insight into the complexities of her art as well as into the head and heart of a fascinating and formidable human being.

Lori M. Campbell holds a doctorate in English from Duquesne University and teaches courses in Literature and Composition at the University of Pittsburgh. Her specialization in nineteenth-and twentieth-century American and British literature includes teaching and publications in Victorian fiction, children’s literature, fantasy, folklore, and cultural studies.

CHAPTER I

A NOT UNNATURAL ENTERPRISE

THIS is written from memory, unfortunately. If I could have brought with me the material I so carefully prepared, this would be a very different story. Whole books full of notes, carefully copied records, firsthand descriptions, and the pictures—that’s the worst loss. We had some bird’s-eyes of the cities and parks; a lot of lovely views of streets, of buildings, outside and in, and some of those gorgeous gardens, and, most important of all, of the women themselves.

Nobody will ever believe how they looked. Descriptions aren’t any good when it comes to women, and I never was good at descriptions anyhow. But it’s got to be done somehow; the rest of the world needs to know about that country.

I haven’t said where it was for fear some self-appointed missionaries, or traders, or land-greedy expansionists, will take it upon themselves to push in. They will not be wanted, I can tell them that, and will fare worse than we did if they do find it.

It began this way. There were three of us, classmates and friends—Terry O. Nicholson (we used to call him the Old Nick, with good reason), Jeff Margrave, and I, Vandyck Jennings.

We had known each other years and years, and in spite of our differences we had a good deal in common. All of us were interested in science.

Terry was rich enough to do as he pleased. His great aim was exploration. He used to make all kinds of a row because there was nothing left to explore now, only patchwork and filling in, he said. He filled in well enough—he had a lot of talents—great on mechanics and electricity. Had all kinds of boats and motorcars, and was one of the best of our airmen.

We never could have done the thing at all without Terry.

Jeff Margrave was born to be a poet, a botanist—or both—but his folks persuaded him to be a doctor instead. He was a good one, for his age, but his real interest was in what he loved to call the wonders of science.

As for me, sociology’s my major. You have to back that up with a lot of other sciences, of course. I’m interested in them all.

Terry was strong on facts—geography and meteorology and those; Jeff could beat him any time on biology, and I didn’t care what it was they talked about, so long as it connected with human life, somehow. There are few things that don’t.

We three had a chance to join a big scientific expedition. They needed a doctor, and that gave

Reviews for Herland and The Yellow Wallpaper (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

[danajean_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In this duo of tales, Charlotte Perkins Gilman takes on very different views about womanhood. In "Herland", we see a society made up of women only. I appreciated the fact that this story showed females in a way that was not condescending in stereotypes. Usually stories with women-only civilizations show them as busty, scantily clad Amazonian girls growling to dominate men. Or, they are all lesbians. Herland was full of women who had transcended sexuality to a higher level. Motherhood is their religion and they achieve pregnancies without men. Smart, loving, caring, trusting, encouraging -- they didn't lose their minds when the 3 men came to their land to master them. They find the men interesting and want to learn about them, maybe in hopes of including fatherhood in their world. One man is your typical macho guy who wants to dominate the women; one man is wimpy and happy to be subservient to women; the third is very much like the women in thoughts and actions. A very interesting look into a feministic way of life that is very peaceful, intelligent and civilized."The Yellow Wallpaper" looks at the life of a wife and mother who is losing herself into a postpartum madness. In this story, women have their place in the home, and that's it. Nothing much is expected of them except to sit around and look pretty and raise children. Their value is minuscule and their thoughts and feelings are downplayed. I enjoyed the first story much more than the second, but, that might be because I liked that idea of womanhood better. Interesting stories; well written.

[whitewavedarling · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Both "Herland" and "The Yellow Wallpaper" are impossible to put down, and Gilman's prose is both wrenching and engaging. The short collection is a quick-read, but bears re-reading (and possibly re-reading after that) since the ideas are in many ways still as fresh as when they were originally written. There's no doubt that a feminist philosophy influences the prose and and development here, but there's a great deal more than that to be appreciated, particularly for readers who enjoy either utopian fiction or philosophy. The one frustration I have with both texts is that I'm left wanting more in each case. Her endings make sense, even as I find them dissatisfying, but on some level I'm still left disappointed and waiting as the last sentences pass. Again, I see the point, but because of her style in ending works, I can't give these a full five stars as I otherwise would, or whole-heartedly enjoy them as much as I think I could otherwise. Still, both of these works which I think everyone should read once, and once the first page is opened, I'm betting that most readers will be hooked.