The Yellow Wallpaper.

Probably the very worst time to choose to read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s  "The Yellow Wallpaper" is in the latter stages of first pregnancy when you find  yourself consumed by growing life  and the kind of fear you can neither justify nor control. No other novella has ever haunted me more…

If you haven’t read it, I don’t want to tell you too much.  I picked this book up because of the cover, (you know what I’m like!!) and found myself absorbed by something  heartbreaking, terrifying and challenging in the extreme.  Has anything really changed  since Gilmans heroine  was locked in isolation and forced to confront her demons in the name of progressive medical science…?

Listen to the radio play here then read Charlotte Perkins Gilmans own explanation of the book here.

Read it and weep for every woman ever haunted by wallpaper, the stifling of her dreams, or the all consuming fear of what it is to be a Mother.