Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "the Yellow Wall-Paper" and the History of Its Publication and Reception: A Critical Edition and Documentary Casebook (Penn State Series in the History of the Book) [Hardcover]

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Author), Julie Bates Dock (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1998 | Series: Penn State Series in the History of the Book

Since its publication in 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wall-paper' has always been recognized as a powerful statement about the victimization of a woman whose neurasthenic condition is completely misdiagnosed, mistreated, and misunderstood, leaving her to face insanity alone, as a prisoner in her own bedroom. Never before, however, has the story itself been portrayed as victimized.In this first critical edition of Gilman's 'The Yellow Wall-paper,' accompanied by contemporary reviews and previously unpublished letters, Julie Bates Dock examines the various myth-frames that have been used to legitimize Gilman's story. The editor discusses how modern feminist critics' readings (and misreadings) of the available documents uphold a set of legends that originated with Gilman herself and that promulgate an almost saintly view of the pioneering feminist author. The documents made available in the collection enable scholars and students to evaluate firsthand Gilman's claims regarding the story's impact on its first audiences.Dock presents an authoritative text of 'The Yellow Wall-paper' for the first time since its initial publication. Included are a textual commentary, full descriptions of all relevant texts, lists of editorial emendations and pre-copy-text substantive variants, a complete historical collation that documents all the variants found in important editions after 1892, and a listing of textual sources for more than one hundred reprintings of the story in anthologies and textbooks.Other documents in the casebook that illuminate the story's publication and reception histories include Gilman's successive and varying accounts of the story's history, her diary and manuscript log entries and letters pertaining to the story, W. D. Howells's correspondence with Gilman and Horace Scudder, editor of The Atlantic Monthly, and his remarks on the story when he reprinted it in Great American Short Stories, and more than two dozen reviews of the story by Gilman's contemporaries.Taken together, the criticism, text, documents, and annotations constitute a rich and valuable contribution to Gilman scholarship, calling into question the feminist literary criticism that has helped to shape interpretations of a literary masterpiece.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Dock s casebook will teach readers several lessons about how much we should credit an author s own account of the fate of a piece of writing. It is a fascinating study of the ways in which literature and political concerns can become intertwined, and how a faulty text and inept bibliographical procedures can seem to undergird statements that simply aren't true. --James M. Hutchisson, The Citadel

Julie Bates Dock s slender volume is essential reading for any who write about (or teach) this now-classic tale. Dock presents readers with a carefully documented model of literary detection - useful to scholar, teacher, and upper-level student alike. No other publication so thoroughly examines issues surrounding the text of 'The Yellow Wall-paper.' --Resources for American Literary Study

About the Author

Julie Bates Dock is an independent scholar living in Torrance, California. She is the author of The Press of Ideas: Readings for Writers on Print Culture and the Information Age (Bedford Books, 1996).

Product Details

• Hardcover: 132 pages
• Publisher: Pennsylvania State University Press (May 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0271017333
• ISBN-13: 978-0271017334
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,876,828 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Authoritative, October 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "the Yellow Wall-Paper" and the History of Its Publication and Reception: A Critical Edition and Documentary Casebook (Penn State Series in the History of the Book) (Hardcover)

This slender casebook of an academic search represents the first authoritative text of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wall-Paper since it was originally published in 1892. It includes book reviews and excerpts of literary and social commentaries that reflect the story's critical reception; it publishes lists of editorial emendations and variants of the story in important editions since 1892 and it gives a listing of textual sources for more than one hundred reprintings of the story in anthologies and textbooks.

The enterprise, itself, deserves recognition for its prodigious and painstaking scholarship and meticulous editing. A product of an undergraduate course on scholarly editing, Julie Bates Dock gave her class a "simple collation exercise" on Gilman's The Yellow Wall-Paper. Students and teacher alike became more and more enthused as they searched for relationships among various editions of the story. This enthusiasm resulted in a collaborative publication by Julie Bates Dock and three of her students.

In a chapter entitled The Legend of The Yellow Wall-Paper, Dock not only recounts how the story has become one of literature's perennial bestsellers, but also warn us that "in its twenty-five-year odyssey of rediscovery by literary critics...the story has picked up along the way an assortment of blemishes and distortions, from textual anomalies to skewed accounts of its publication history to misinformation about its contemporary reception." This should be enough to make any academic want to research its history.

The evidence of casual distortions that change the import of original texts as shown in the present case emphasizes the importance of textual criticism and traditional modes of criticism. Dock says, "...the use of documents is affected by critical trends and by critics' biases and expectations...The feminist critics of the early 1970s, intent on establishing women authors in the American literary canon, had a stake in portraying the story as a victimized piece of literature. The notion that Gilman suffered condemnation from editors and readers outside the story tidily echoed the narrator's victimization within the story." Dock then goes on to cite two examples where major feminist critics came to unexamined and hasty conclusions about the publication of the story.

Dock also provides evidence to argue that omission of a few words distorts Gilman's focus. For example, the words, "in marriage," in the sentence, "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that (in marriage)." Gilman was against the institution of marriage, but not necessarily against men in general!

Legends that Gilman had to struggle to get her story published, that most readers thought of it as a "ghost story," that it received an especially distasteful reception from the male medical community are also put to rest, as evidence simply does not support these beliefs.

Dock also points out discrepancies in Gioman's own accounts as well, such as her inaccurate and varying dates and titles as well as her claim that Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, her own physician, altered his treatment of neurasthenia after reading The Yellow Wall-Paper. This is, as Dock points out, a case of "he says/she says conundrums."

The book is wonderfully embellished with photographs of Charlotte Perkins Stetson, W.D. Howells, Horace E. Scudder and Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, as well as with other visuals.

The book also cites interesting excerpts from Gilman's autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Correspondence. It explains or compiles painstaking commentaries on textual matters, selection of copy, publication history, authorial practice and preference, editorial emendations and many other publication matters as well as reviews of the story which appeared in various magazines. The Appendix provides a history of the printing of The Yellow Wall-Paper from 1892 until 1997.

This is a scholarly book, to be sure, but it is one that is also extremely interesting. In addition to learning the history of The Yellow Wall-Paper, we also learn much about Gilman's motivations, her aesthetics of writing and her own views on both marriage and men.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Charlotte as a victim of patriarchal oppression, March 2, 2010

By 

C. Karayazi (Chapel Hill, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "the Yellow Wall-Paper" and the History of Its Publication and Reception: A Critical Edition and Documentary Casebook (Penn State Series in the History of the Book) (Hardcover)

Throughout the movie "The Yellow Wall Paper" by John Clive (2008) which is an adaptation from Charlotte Gilman's story "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1899), there are number of interpolations. In the movie, the household has a gardener whose daughter rides a bicycle in her yellow dress, although this detail is not all mentioned in the original story. Also, in the movie, Charlotte's mother and other family members come down for a visit where they sit around a table to spend their tea-time together and eat pastries and sweets. Charlotte gets very nervous and she faints when her mother cuts the cake on the table. This whole instance is not mentioned in the original story, but the director added this scene in the adaptation. Another scene which is not mentioned in the story, but added in the adaptation is that in her room, Charlotte finds a yellow dress in the chest which she thought she was seeing for the first time, but actually belonged to her. Then, her husband tells her that he got her that dress in Rome. There are some more details which is not on the original story, but later added to the movie. For example, in the movie Charlotte's son is actually present she is able to see him and has a set time daily to play with him. In the movie, a doctor examines Charlotte and rips out the pages of her notebook. Also, Charlotte and Jennie seem to become friends and Jennie actually yells at Charlotte's husband John and tells him that he may not always know what is best for Charlotte. Lastly, in the movie a woman, who resembles Charlotte emerges from the yellow wallpaper in her room and kisses Charlotte. Some of these are added to the movie just to expand the length of the movie, and some of them are added to infuse the director's interpretation of the original work to the movie. Also, there can be modifications with the representations of the characters in the movie. For example, in the original story, Charlotte's (narrator's) husband John is genuinely concerned for his wife's well-being, but he unintentionally harms her by adhering to Victorian perceptions of the what a woman requires and the rest cure treatment. His wife is emotionally overwrought, therefore he sincerely believes that she must be confined to her bed and denied any mental stimulation. Charlotte's husband John was portrayed differently in the original story and in the adaptation. In the movie, sometimes her husband was aggressive (if not abusive) towards Charlotte. In the book, he carries her upstairs and lies her on the bed, and sits by her and reads to her, but in the movie we do not witness such a scene. Sometimes, the intended message of the movie's (adaptation) director might be different from that of original story's author. Gilman's initial reason to write the story "The Yellow Wallpaper" was to prove Dr. Weir MItchell's rest cure treatment wrong. For years, she suffered from nervous breakdown and depression, and was put to bed by -one of the best specialists of the time-Dr. Mitchell. According to Dr. Mitchell's treatment, she was supposed to live a domestic life as far as possible, have no more than two hours of intellectual life a day and never touch pen, brush or pencil. Her symptoms worsened after she followed Dr. Mitchell's directions for three months. So, she started to work again, and eventually recovered. To inform other people that this particular treatment did not work and maybe even to make Dr. Mitchell acknowledge that his treatment was not affective, she wrote this story. On the other hand, it is likely that when making the adaptation of the story, John Clive might have intended to give different messages. The adaptation was produced in 1989, ninety years after Gilman wrote her story. That is why, it is very likely that Clive's intention of making an adaptation from Gilman's story was not to prove Dr. Mitchell's treatment wrong; that treatment was not valid in 1989 anyways. Clive's intention could be to draw attention to oppression of women in our society. He might have used Gilman's story because it has certain elements in it, which could help Clive make his points. For example, the whole rest cure treatment in the story was based on oppression of women (who was Charlotte in the story). She was treated like a kid, not taken seriously as if she was subordinate. Although she was going through a depression, she could still tell if her treatment was any good for her or not, but still her opinions did not matter. That is why, in the adaptation Charlotte is portrayed more as a victim of patriarchal oppression.