Book Review: “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Hello there!

In a way to get me ready for fall and of course, Halloween, I wanted to find something that would reflect my mood and I thought my favorite thrillers. Now, I am not a very big fan of horror despite my love for vampires, witches and werewolves, but I do enjoy a good psychological thriller here and there.

I thought it was Victoria Helen Stone’s Jane Doe that got me interested in this genre, but then I started to remember when I was in high school, and I took two separate classes for each semester and the first was Novels where my interest in the genre was tested as we read Frankenstein by Mary Shelley and Helter Skelter by Curt Gentry and Vincent Bugliosi. However, it wasn’t until I went into Short Stories that I was introduced to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s classic The Yellow Wall–Paper and this really made me realize that this was only the beginning.

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A woman and her husband rent a summer house, but what should be a restful getaway turns into a suffocating psychological battle. This chilling account of postpartum depression and a husband’s controlling behavior in the guise of treatment will leave you breathless. 

taken from Goodreads.

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When I finally decided that I would re-read this story, I did it for a specfic reasons: I didn’t exactly remember how it ended, all I could figure out was that it creeped me out. Fast forward, I wasn’t wrong with my initial rememberance but things that wouldn’t make sense to me at that time of the first read; I knew of very little history about how women were treated in that timeframe, so by the time I had went back to it, I had the knowledge to back everything up in my brain.

Our main character Jane is forced to stay indoors and recover from a fit of “nervousness” as she calls it, and if the word “baby” didn’t turn up in a sentence later, we wouldn’t know it’s actually name as we call it postpartum depression. For her and other women of that time, it had another name completely “hysteria” and it wasn’t the best diagnosis for a woman as there is evidence (and lots of it!) towards how husbands, sons, brothers, and doctors put various women and girls in asylums for their overwhelming feelings in the 19th Century.

“It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw – not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things.”

Jane is unique though as her husband is a physician and he seems to love her enough, to support her in this condition at home. So, she is forced to recover in the master bedroom of their rental mansion, where it has decaying yellow wallpaper everywhere. Jane absolutely hates it. I understand her frustrations about it though, as I had purchased a pillow and sheet set that showed the color yellow to be as bright as the sun, but then we unwrapped it and found that the pillowcase fits the description to a T, but the sheet itself does not. It is so light that if nobody knew I had a brown mattress underneath, they certainly would as soon as they walked into my room… Anywho, like one does when they cannot explore freely, Jane starts to notice various things like the odd patterns and the disturbing figure that seems to appear at night.

Despite its small size, it definitely packs a punch worthy of a regular novel. I mean, as much as I love Frankenstein, my drive towards this book was stronger, and that’s saying something!

For anyone out there who is not too interested in horror, I highly suggest giving this story a shot before the end of the month. Although, if you feel comfortable waiting until after the Halloween festivities then by all means wait it out, but trust me when I say, you may end up enjoying it more than you think and want more like it afterwards, so as a nice warning, be sure to prepare yourselves!

Have you read Charlotte’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” before? If your answer is yes, how did you come across it? I’d also like to know what you thought about it the first time you read it. Please tell me everything in the comments below!

Self-Control And Booze

So St. Patrick’s Day is this weekend, actually it’s tomorrow. Can I say, I hate being underage during this time. I’m not yet 21 and won’t be for a few more months, but I’ve feeling the urge to drop this good girl deeds and just go right for it. I’m not like that though. I need some self-control in my life and fighting temptations is smart especially when you’ve been fighting them since you were a teenager. I live in a small town. majority of everybody here adults and teens alike have all had their first drink underage I bet you. Some of them will try to say they haven’t, but how can you believe them? Everybody’s pretty open about their pasts because everybody talks about it on their Facebook statuses. Nobody has the self-control to keep their mouths shut.

I’ve been wanting to drink illegally for years. Everybody I was around had told me that they’d take me sometime and we’d all get drunk. Teenage years, it’s fun to go to somebody’s house and get drunk and have some fun with friends. I’d like to go over to somebody’s house and talk to them, but knowing they’d probably have alcohol around would make think less of them. I’m not a fan of underage drinking nowadays. I’m also not a fan of drunk drinking either. I think if you drink and drive you are an idiot. Whether you are underage or over 21 doing this you are not setting a good example of yourself at all.

The only year I can think of when I really wanted to get drunk was on New Years in 2008. My sister and I had stayed over at my nana’s. Our cousin Kristi was there and we had lots of fun without all the booze. You can have fun without it. Alcohol can’t make your party better, instead it makes you do stupid stuff that you may regret later on in life. I’ve got enough mistakes in my life. I don’t need anymore from drinking at a party. I’ve actually been debating if I want to get drunk on my birthday or not. I’ve been thinking about how to do a shot, and I started thinking I can’t even like the taste of cough medicine and I hate taking that stuff as a shot. I want to stay away from beer and Tequila for personal reasons. I’ve been looking at different vodkas, and found out there’s a cookie dough flavored vodka. My temptations hate me now.

So I’ll be sober for another St. Patrick’s Day. I’ve been thinking of only drinking on different holidays. It seemed smarter that way instead of drinking every weekend. I only want to drink on my birthday, Thanksgiving (I’ve got a lot of crazy people in my family), Valentine’s Day (because it is the most depressing holiday out there for single people), and of course St. Patrick’s Day even though I think beer is what the holiday is based on so I’ll be screwed for that one. Maybe I’ll be strong enough to keep myself away from it all…. I don’t think so. As long as I don’t have to get drunk with my mom and aunt at a strip club I’m fine.

Facebook High School

I’ve realized something. Facebook is very annoying. Everybody hates it, but we still use it. Get online in the middle of the night and check things out. Updating about things certain people in this world shouldn’t know. Uploading memories into albums and remembering when things were bad. Since Facebook has changed their timeline again. Surprisingly I actually like it, but I’ve found out I’m the only one who does. It’s alright, it’s good to be alone for once. The timeline shows you ALL of your posts from the time you started Facebook. When I first heard about that, I’m not going to lie I was tempted to reactivate my original account to see my posts from 2008, which was the year I started, but I didn’t because I knew it was stupid.

I’ve had this new account for probably three months and I’m already getting people trying to add me. It’s getting really annoying! I hate the fact that everybody is just adding you for the heck of it. It’s somehow turned into a popularity contest of whose got the most friends. It is stupid! When I first started this account I made it just for myself, family, and Twitter friends. I only had close to four friends from my other account I wanted back because I really liked them. The rest I was done with. I wasn’t going to add them because I knew it would be too good to be true. Well then I caved. I added a few here and there. Now I’m mad at myself for adding all these freaking people who never talk to me. Why should I have you as MY friend when you aren’t being a real friend and talking to me? So tomorrow, I’m going to be deleting people. I need to have more control of who I want on my profile, and right now I’m not wanting anybody, but I gotta be nice to some of them because they don’t deserve this.

Role Model

I discovered this video yesterday after I posted on my Twitter I missed Justin Timberlake’s amazing voice. Thanks to my friend Mariel, she was the one who started the obsession on this song. I didn’t think Justin Timberlake was a good rapper, but I changed my mind after hearing this for the first time. The song is really good. The last time I actually heard a fairly good rap song was when “Black and Yellow” by Wiz Khalfia first came out. After that, I haven’t heard many others. I still think after 2008 the whole rap industry went downhill. Everybody is turning to dance music, which is cool you know? But nothing sounds like a true rap song anymore.

One thing I happened to notice while watching this music video was how it reminded me of another music video. Anybody seen Fort Minor’s music video for “Petrified?” Some parts of both videos are somewhat similar. I know it’s sad that I say this, but it’s true. You can either agree or disagree, but don’t judge me. Want to know one thing is the same, besides the black and white part of the video? The spatkler. That was what started it, and I couldn’t help myself. Both videos are awesome.

Remember That One Time On The Bus, When…?

I have a lot of crazy stories of the time I rode the bus to school and back home, but there was one story that is just priceless and very funny to try to talk about. Because anytime I try to tell about it I instantly start laughing because my bus driver, at the time he was our sub. Anyways, he did not expect it and neither did I. It’s a funny story and I’m going to share it.

In 2008, we had a sub bus driver. On my bus, we had a total of four students on our bus at the time. Now there’s a story before this, between my friend Nathan and myself our music stations didn’t mess well with each other. It wasn’t til Junior year that I started bringing in my iPod so I didn’t have to listen to Country music ALL the time! Well when Nathan had to stay after school, guess who got to channel the station. This girl.

Anyways, our bus driver apparently liked the Country stations a lot more than he liked mine. We have two pop stations here in my hometown. Well I got on the bus and got strabbed in place and our bus driver changed it to one of the channels. I didn’t know it was going to play these songs, but it did.

The first song that played was “Goodies” by Ciara featuring Petey Pablo. Second song was “Candy Shop” by 50 Cent featuring Olivia. And the last one was “Hot In Here” by Nelly. That was an awkward ride home, believe me. He had that mirror so he can see behind him in the back and for him always telling us after he become our official bus driver that he couldn’t hear the radio. Sadly, I think he heard those three songs. I felt bad afterwards.

When we got up to the house, I was laughing my butt off because of his face. When my mom brought the lift down and greeted my bus driver and I. He said to my mom, “you know her music is a little wild.” I think my mom started laughing after he said that because she was the reason why I even listen to that kind of music. When he left and we went inside she asked me what played and I told her and I thought her eyes were going to come out of her skull. It was hilarious but yet weird. I think it’s safe to say I think he switched the station back to Country afterwards. Can you blame him?

So that’s my story. That’s the priceless story I will never forget.