The Yellow Wallpaper

by Gilman, Charlotte Perkins; Bauer, Dale M.

• ISBN13: 9780312132927
• ISBN10: 0312132921
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-01-15
• Publisher: Bedford/St. Martin's

Summary

Based on the 1892New England Magazinetext, this teaching edition ofThe Yellow Wallpaperincludes a generous selection of historical materials. The documents are organized into thematic units and features nineteenth-century advice manuals for young women and mothers; medical texts discussing the nature of women's sexuality; social reform literature concerning women's rights, the working classes, and immigration; and excerpts from periodicals, diaries, and writers' notebooks that give students a sense of the changing literary scene that Gilman entered. Editorial features designed to help students read the novel in light of the documents include a general introduction providing historical and cultural background, a chronology o Hawthorne's life and times, an introduction to each thematic group of documents, headnotes, extensive annotations, a generous selection of illustrations, and a selected bibliography.

Table of Contents

  About the Series
  About This Volume
  List of Illustrations
    
PART I. THE YELLOW WALLPAPER: THE COMPLETE TEXT
    
  Introduction: Cultural and Historical Background
    
  Chronology of Gilman's Life and Times
    
  The Yellow Wallpaper [1892 New England Magazine Edition]
    
    
PART II. THE YELLOW WALLPAPER: CULTURAL CONTEXTS
    
  1. Conduct Literature and Motherhood Manuals
    Catharine Beecher, From A Treatise on Domestic Economy
    Susan Power, From The Ugly-Girl Papers
    Julia and Annie Thomas, From Psycho-Physical Culture
    Marion Harland, "What Shall We Do with the Mothers?"
    Margaret E. Sangster, From Winsome Womanhood: Familiar Talks on Life and Conduct
    Frances E. Willard, From How to Win: A Book for Girls
    William Acton, From The Function and Disorder of the Reproductive Organs
    
  2. Invalid Women
    S. Weir Mitchell, From Wear and Tear, or Hints for the Overworked
    S. Weir Mitchell, "Nervousness and Its Influence on Character"
    S. Weir Mitchell, "The Evolution of the Rest Cure"
    Prudence B. Sauer, From Maternity: A Book for Every Wife and Mother
    John Harvey Kellogg, From The Household Monitor of Health
    John Harvey Kellogg, From The Ladies' Guide in Health and Disease
    Alfred Meadows, "Puerperal Mania"
    Fordyce Barker, From The Puerperal Diseases
    
    3. Sexuality, Race, and Social Control
    1873 Comstock Law
    Anthony Comstock, From Traps for the Young
    Theodore Roosevelt, Address to the National Congress of Mothers, March, 1905
    Edward Alsworth Ross, From "The Causes of Race Superiority"
    George M. Beard, From American Nervousness
    A. J. Bloch, From "Sexual Perversion in the Female"
    Havelock Ellis, From "Sexual Inversion in Women"
    Richard von Krafft-Ebing, From Psychopathia Sexualis
    Lester Frank Ward, From Pure Sociology
    Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Parasitism and Civilised Vice"
    
  4. Movements for Social Change
    Angela Heywood, Selections from The Word
    Edward Bellamy, From Looking Backward: 2000–1887
    Thorstein Veblen, From The Theory of the Leisure Class
    Charlotte Perkins Gilman, From Women and Economics
    Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Think Husbands Aren't Mainstays"
    Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Dr. Clair's Place"
    Charlotte Perkins Gilman, From The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman
    
  5. Literary Responses and Literary Culture
    Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper?"
    Charlotte Perkins Gilman, On the Reception of "The Yellow Wallpaper"
    William Dean Howells, From Criticism and Fiction
    Henry James, From The Notebooks
    Alice James, From The Diary of Alice James
    Kate Chopin, The Story of an Hour
    
  Selected Bibliography