Publisher's Synopsis
This special edition contains two of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's most popular short stories, the widely acclaimed The Yellow Wallpaper and the controversial Herland. The Yellow Wallpaper is a story about a woman who suffered from post-partum depression after recently giving birth to a child. She was confined to bed in a nursery and forbidden by her physician husband to write or work during her "rest cure." Without any mental stimulation, she experienced episodes of anxiety and fatigue. She also became irritated and obsessed with the patterns and distinct smell of the wallpaper in her room. What she discovered after the peeling off the wallpaper shocked her senses to the core. Herland is a Utopian novel about three adventurers, who stumbled onto an isolated, all-female society. Each of these characters arrived with their own preconceived ideas about women. Vandyck, a sociologist, view women from the male-dominated, Victorian, perspective. He believed that women are incapable of organizing, cooperating, and specializing in work. Jeff, who was described as a romantic, believed that women should be worshiped and placed on a pedestal. Terry, in contrast, is the proud flag bearer of the male machismo. Their fortuitous encounter and the subsequent relationship they developed forced them to re-examine their assumptions about women's roles in society.
