The Yellow Wallpaper & Herland

Bringing The Best of "Charlotte Perkins Gilman" together, "The Yellow Wallpaper & Herland". The Yellow Wallpaper: is a short story by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature for its illustration of the attitudes towards mental and physical health of women in the 19th century. Narrated in the first person, the story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband (John) has rented an old mansion for the summer. Forgoing other rooms in the house, the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment, the unnamed woman is forbidden from working or writing, and is encouraged to eat well and get plenty of air, so she can recuperate from what he calls a "temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency", a diagnosis common to women during that period. Herland: Herland is a 1915 feminist utopian novel written by American feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The book describes an isolated society composed entirely of women, who bear children without men (parthenogenesis, a form of asexual reproduction). The result is an ideal social order: free of war, conflict, and domination. The title nation of "Herland" is symbolic of the argument for social reform in the area of woman's rights that took place in the early part of the 20th century in America. By placing women in such an ideal light, Gilman is arguing that women should have as much say in the matters of the world as men and if they did society would be better off for it.