Halloween Reading: "The Yellow Wallpaper"

The tradition of Halloween readings continues this year with Kole's reading of The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

It's an early work of feminist literature, and an early psychological horror story. Like Frankenstein, its horror results from the depiction of extreme medical malpractice. Gilman wrote the story to protest the way women's psychological and emotional health were being treated by a chauvinist, male-dominated medical profession.

The narrator and protagonist of the story is a woman suffering from an unnamed mental illness, and her doctor husband insists that the best treatment is rest therapy. She remains confined in a room covered with hideous yellow wallpaper, and over the course of weeks, she slowly unravels.

I fell in love with this story when I first read it in college, and I'm excited to share it with anyone who hasn't read it yet.

The music used in this presentation is from the soundtrack to Rule of Rose, a 2006 survival horror game.