A Favorite Reading

 Have you ever had a reading stick in your head, I have, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman written in 1892, http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Charlotte_Perkins_Gilman/The_Yellow_Wallpaper/The_Yellow_Wallpaper_p1.html. So far this story has remained ever so vivid in my mind that the simple site of my old fading yellow birdcage brings me back to thoughts of the main character, who is a woman trying to free herself from a mental illness which is not being addressed properly by her physician husband.  

 As I read this story, I grew fond of this character and felt a bit angry over the restrictions placed upon her.  She was confined to a room with yellow wallpaper, restricted from working and actually had to hide her journal from her husband John who would not approve.  Throughout the story she is fixated on the wallpaper in the room she is confined in and becomes more and more out of touch with the world.  I never found the woman’s name said right out, although, one indication  may be in the quote "I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane.”  This leads me to believe the narrator is speaking of herself in the third person and feels that she has somehow escaped from herself.  Considering the year it’s written, I wonder if it struck a lot of people the wrong way.  I know I felt anger and compassion at the same time reading this story.

It will remain one of my favorites.