Wild Unrest : Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Making of The Yellow Wall-Paper

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In Wild Unrest, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz offers a vivid portrait of Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the 1880s, drawing new connections between the author's life and work and illuminating the predicament of women then and now. "The Yellow Wall-Paper" captured a woman's harrowing descent into madness and drew on the author's intimate knowledge of mental illness. Like the narrator of her story, Gilman was a victim of what was termed "neurasthenia" or "hysteria"--a "bad case of the nerves." She had faced depressive episodes since adolescence, and with the arrival of marriage and motherhood, they deepened. In 1887 she suffered a severe breakdown and sought the "rest cure" of famed neurologist S. Weir Mitchell. Her marriage was a troubled one, and in the years that followed she separated from and ultimately divorced her husband. It was at this point, however, that Gilman embarked on what would become an influential career as an author, lecturer, and advocate for women's rights. Horowitz draws on a treasure trove of primary sources to illuminate the making of "The Yellow Wall-Paper": Gilman's journals and letters, which closely track her daily life and the reading that most influenced her; the voluminous diaries of her husband, Walter Stetson, which contain verbatim transcriptions of conversations with and letters from Charlotte; and the published work of S. Weir Mitchell, whose rest cure dominated the treatment of female "hysteria" in late 19th century America. Horowitz argues that these sources ultimately reveal that Gilman's great story emerged more from emotions rooted in the confinement and tensions of her unhappy marriage than from distress following Mitchell's rest cure. Wild Unrest adds immeasurably to our understanding of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, uncovering both the literary and personal sources behind "The Yellow Wall-Paper."

Testimonials

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars He Said, She Said, December 21, 2010
ByErin Blakemore (Boulder, CO, USA) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Wild Unrest: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Making of "The Yellow Wall-Paper" (Hardcover)
Charlotte Perkins Gilman always claimed that her tour de force, "The Yellow Wall-Paper," was written to protest the "rest cure" commonly prescribed to "hysterical" nineteenth-century women. Luckily for us, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz was unsatisfied with that explanation, and she paints a very different portrait in Wild Unrest. By placing Charlotte's diaries and letters aside those of her eventual husband, Charles Walter Stetson, Horowitz reconstructs a young wife's formative years in he-said, she-said fashion. I didn't expect the picture that emerges to be so clear or so creepy. I recommend this book to passionate readers, connoisseurs of literary biography, and anyone curious about the inner workings of nineteenth-century marriage.



2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars this is an important and entertaining biography!, December 10, 2010
ByGwen Jensen
This review is from: Wild Unrest: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Making of "The Yellow Wall-Paper" (Hardcover)
This excellent biography of the early years of Charlotte Perkins Gilmaln tells the story of an unfortunate marriage, of mental illness, and of survival and growth. In its telling Horowitz introduces the reader to late 19th century assumptions about sexuality and medicine in a most engaging manner. It is a very good book.



1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A Major Contribution to Our Understanding of Gilman and Her World, January 21, 2011
ByRonald Perera (Northampton, MA) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Wild Unrest: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Making of "The Yellow Wall-Paper" (Hardcover)
As the composer of an opera based on The Yellow Wallpaper, I found Helen Horowitz's new book fascinating. She has achieved that delicate balance between fine scholarship and good story telling in making this biography as edifying to the Gilman scholar as it is compelling to the general reader. In doing so she has dispelled both the oversimplification and the postmodern myth making of those who would twist this tale to suit their own ideology--both of these tendencies, alas, too prevalent in the treatment of Gilman and her novella in the modern academy. She has uncovered the story of a deeply conflicted and complicated woman living in a time that both constrained and liberated her. It was almost impossible, given who she was, that she could flourish either personally or professionally in such a time, yet what is remarkable is how much she did manage to resolve in her personal life and ultimately overcome in her professional one.I was appreciative of the care Horowitz took in exploring the relationship between Weir Mitchell and his famous rest cure and the fictional regime of enforced solitude and rest depicted in the novella. Feminist scholars in particular have too easily scapegoated Mitchell as the devil responsible both for Gilman's most significant breakdown and for what they assume is her fictional alter ego's breakdown as well. Horowitz's book gives us a highly nuanced picture of the state of psychology. neurology and their allied disciplines as they came to bear on real men's and women's lives at the end of the 19th century and on Charlotte's life in particular. She has taken no shortcuts here, and has avoided easy answers. Helen Horowitz deserves our admiration and thanks for this important contribution to our knowledge of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and her era.Ronald Perera





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