Edited with a new introduction by Aimee McLaughlin

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892, is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature for its illustration of the attitudes towards mental and physical health of women in the 19th century.

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Our new edition also features the sequence of poems "Woman" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

"The gothic genre offers Gilman an effective mode of diagnosing contemporary culture whilst in tandem expressing her ensuing fears and anxieties. Gilman within this novella, gothicises the domestic setting, inverting the pillars of domesticity: family, security and understanding, in turn unveiling the dangers lurking behind the familiarity of gender roles within marital relations. The intimate first-person narration of the narrative serves to enhance Gilman’s exposure of the oppressive forces of a male-dominated society, as she deplores her protagonist’s inferior position in her domestic arrangement. The female narrator is encumbered by masculine superiority, undoubtedly dwelling in the middle of patriarchy. Embedded within her characterisation is the subjugated role bestowed upon Victorian women. Gilman projects derangement onto a familiar literary figure ― the middle−class wife and mother ― placing the source of this madness in the inviolate sphere for dutiful women ― the home."

from the new introduction to The Yellow Wallpaper by Aimee McLaughlin