{"version":"1.0","type":"rich","provider_name":"Acast","provider_url":"https://acast.com","height":250,"width":700,"html":"","title":"The Yellow Wallpaper: Gilman's Domestic Imprisonment","thumbnail_width":200,"thumbnail_height":200,"thumbnail_url":"https://open-images.acast.com/shows/6a28001ca917ce4c7065c483/4143be6c-cd5c-40b8-97ab-7d4fd2be2258.jpg?height=200","description":"Published in January 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is one of the founding texts of feminist speculative fiction. Written after Gilman herself was subjected to Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell's infamous 'rest cure' in 1887 — which prescribed enforced bed rest, isolation from family and friends, overfeeding, and a complete ban on intellectual activity (Mitchell told Gilman to 'have but two hours' intellectual life a day' and 'never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again') — the story follows a woman confined to a nursery by her physician husband, who slowly descends into madness as she becomes obsessed with the patterns in the room's yellow wallpaper. The story operates on multiple levels simultaneously: as psychological horror, as feminist critique of medical authority over women's bodies and minds, and as a speculative exploration of what happens when a mind is deliberately starved of stimulation. Gilman later wrote in 'Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper' (The Forerunner, October 1913) that she sent the story to Mitchell, who never acknowledged it, though she was later told through friends that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia. This claim has been disputed by literary historian Julie Bates Dock, who found that Mitchell continued his rest cure methods until his death in 1914. The story was largely forgotten for decades before being rediscovered by the feminist movement in 1973, when the Feminist Press published it with an afterword by Elaine R. Hedges — an edition that sold over 225,000 copies and became the Feminist Press's all-time best-seller. It is now recognized as a foundational text of feminist literature, and is also claimed as foundational to women's SF. Its domestic setting — the home as prison, the nursery as cell — established a key motif that would run through feminist SF for the next century: the house as the architecture of patriarchal control. HCI: 5 — primary texts, biographical records, and extensive scholarly literature available.","author_name":"Atween Studios"}