# Charlotte Perkins Gilman **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 17, 2004, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlotte-perkins-gilman/234921 "2004-03-17T21:59:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![hlanelee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3bc359/32.png) [@hlanelee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hlanelee)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlotte-perkins-gilman/234921/1 "2004-03-17T21:59:14Z")
I’ve just read “The Yellow Wallpaper” for school. Certain characteristics of her writing strike me as familiar. I know that she had emotional problems and the condition I’m thinking of had not been defined yet. Do experts suspect that Gilman was suffering from manic depression? ---
**Author:** ![AveDementia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/bc8723/32.png) [@AveDementia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AveDementia)\ **Post date:** [March 17, 2004, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlotte-perkins-gilman/234921/2 "2004-03-17T23:53:03Z")
Haven’t heard that theory, but you did remind me of seeing “The Yellow Wallpaper” on a PBS production. And I read an essay that mentioned the author not long after that. I don’t know that it could be of much help to you, but the essay was about how restrictive the lives of Victorian women were. The theory was that a lack of creative and emotional outlets led many women into mental illness- depression and/or a kind of hysteria. I suppose kind of like prisoners in solitary confinement losing their minds from the sheer unrelenting boredom. ---
**Author:** ![Moo\_the\_Magic\_Cow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ebca7d/32.png) [@Moo\_the\_Magic\_Cow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Moo_the_Magic_Cow)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2004, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlotte-perkins-gilman/234921/3 "2004-03-18T00:48:36Z")
My teacher mentioned that she might’ve been suffering from post-partem depression, though they certainly didn’t call it that then. ---
**Author:** ![RachelChristine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/7ab992/32.png) [@RachelChristine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RachelChristine)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2004, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlotte-perkins-gilman/234921/4 "2004-03-18T03:00:56Z")
I remember reading that many people think it was Post Partum Depression. I also just wanted to say that one of my favorite things I’ve ever written (and I do _NOT_ write) was retelling The Yellow Wallpaper from the husbands point of view. It was a lot of fun and, IMO, well-written (for me anyway). ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2004, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlotte-perkins-gilman/234921/5 "2004-03-18T04:09:28Z")
I believe Gilman also killed herself, no doubt as a result of these or other disorders. ---
**Author:** ![WernhamHogg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/a587f6/32.png) [@WernhamHogg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WernhamHogg)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2004, 4:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlotte-perkins-gilman/234921/6 "2004-03-18T04:16:51Z")
Depressive Disorder, not bipolar (she didn’t experience manic episodes). If I remember correctly, one noted psychologist/psychiatrist who saw CPG for her depression was William James (who was no stranger to depression himself)… but now I can’t find anything about it. ---
**Author:** ![DadWagonDriver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/edb3f5/32.png) [@DadWagonDriver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DadWagonDriver)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2004, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlotte-perkins-gilman/234921/7 "2004-03-18T06:24:40Z")
Yeah, it was Post-Partum Depression. \* “The Yellow Wall-paper” is largely biopic. Her style seems familiar to you probably because she’s very similar to Chopin with a little bit of Cather thrown in. If you read Chopin’s “The Awakening” first, that’s probably the similarity you’re seeing. \*This is in the _Norton Anthology of American Literature_. ---
**Author:** ![hlanelee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3bc359/32.png) [@hlanelee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hlanelee)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2004, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlotte-perkins-gilman/234921/8 "2004-03-18T10:45:12Z")
The thing that I am referring to, as far as style, is the short paragraphs, the terse expression, stuff like that in the writing. Also, the narrator of the story is clearly delusonal, she is having both visual and somatic hallucinations (been there, done that). This and the narrator’s general paranoid attitude indicates mania. I have a stack of journals with writing like this. I’m willing to bet that the initial manuscript was written in a scrawl that Gilman, herself, probably had trouble reading. Gilman had breast cancer, even today the treatment is horrible. She chloroformed her self rather than face it. I would do the same. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2004, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/charlotte-perkins-gilman/234921/9 "2004-03-18T12:52:01Z")
**RachelChristine** , I’d like to read that!