There are always short stories that stick in the minds of students, the more disturbing the better. A prominent one is The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in 1892. Now, the short story is being transformed into a feature-length film.
In Gilman’s short story, an unnamed female narrator is told by her husband to take a rest cure when she suffers “temporary nervous depression” after the birth of their baby. The couple stays at a resort, but the woman is confined to a nursery that has yellow wallpaper. The bed is bolted to the bed, and there are bars on the window and scratches cover the floorboard.
There she begins to see images of a woman in the yellow, and I won’t spoil the rest, but considering the story was meant to critique the way women’s mental health was treated, “madness” is just around every corner.
In this upcoming film adaptation, the unnamed narrator is called Jane:
“Jane, a writer and young mother, is prescribed a rest treatment by her physician husband John, who takes her to a remote country estate for the summer. She becomes obsessed with the peculiar yellow wallpaper in the bedroom he has chosen for her. In her isolation, she secretly writes about a woman trapped in the wallpaper-that she must free.”
(via Bloody Disgusting)
A previous adaptation of the work came out in 2011, but it was a very loose adaptation in comparison to this version, which directly brings Gilman’s work to life.
Since its publication, The Yellow Wallpaper has been a frequently discussed subject in feminist literary thought, and Gilman herself has been a subject ripe for discussion, since she was capable of writing something that so much advocated for women’s humanity, but was also a vile racist and xenophobe.
The film looks to be an engaging thriller, and while I have a lot of dislike for Gilman as a human being, The Yellow Wallpaper continues to be a short story that I find myself thinking of often. Now all we need is a new A Rose for Emily adaptation.
(via Bloody Disgusting, image: Mutiny Pictures)
