Read this when
The Yellow Wallpaper
Doctor: 'Just rest.' Husband: 'You're fine.' Her: *slowly bonding with the wallpaper.* Being unheard is its own kind of trap.
Who it's for
Written as secret journal entries, the story puts readers inside a woman whose husband, a physician, prescribes rest and forbids her writing, so they experience her growing fixation on the wallpaper from the inside.
Feelings it meets
What it is
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine, takes the form of journal entries by a woman whose physician husband confines her to an upstairs nursery in a rented summer mansion as treatment for what he calls a temporary nervous depression.
Where to find it
Public domain in the US; free on Project Gutenberg and other public-domain sites. Widely anthologised; audio versions exist.
Before you start
Heads up: Postpartum delusion, hints of suicide.
Age: Ages 14+
One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings;W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, Chapter 1
