Literature of Prescription | Activities

Presenter: Kim Hunter-Perkins

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wall-Paper, the narrator exclaims, “I don’t know why I should write this.” Today, we might ask, why should we read this? The Yellow Wall-Paper has become a touchtone literary text taught in a variety of classrooms — from high school through university. Further, it remains an intriguing tale, one critics like Catherine Golden refer to as “Poe-esque” in its horror and on par with James Russell Lowell’s civil satires — firmly establishing Gilman’s bona fides as a member of the earlier 19th-century canon.

As a short story, an example of 19th-century women’s writing, and for its timely perspective on medicine and psychology, Wall-Paper remains immanently teachable and readable for a variety of audiences. This presentation will explore how the story appeals to such a wide variety of readers and educators, as well as what literary scholars continue to find so intriguing about such a short text. Further, it will explore how Gilman’s work fits into, as well as diverges from, the literary traditions that critics have attempted to situate it within.

Kim Hunter-Perkins is an instructor at Purdue University, where she is working toward a Ph.D. in early to 19th-century American literature. She received an M.A. and B.A. from Eastern Illinois University. Her research focuses on antebellum war discourse and civil/military satire, as well as the impact of multi-media on perceptions of war and gender through the 19th century.

Presenter: Parley Ann Boswell, Professor of English

Pregnancy represents one of the most challenging, complicated and ultimately compelling of all fictional elements. American authors had to obscure the details of fictional pregnancy until the turn of the 20th century; but especially as women began publishing more fiction, pregnancy began to show. We will explore how fictional pregnancy began to enrich American literature during Gilman’s time by looking at pregnancy fiction by Harriet Jacobs, Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Gilman herself. These and other writers contributed to the birth of the American pregnancy narrative and influenced many later writers and filmmakers.

Parley Ann Boswell teaches American literature from the colonial period through the early 20th century, and film studies courses at EIU. She has published on popular literature from the colonial period through 21st-century Hollywood culture. Her forthcoming book, Pregnancy in Film and Literature, will be published in 2014.

Introduction by David Bell, Professor in Reference Services, Booth Library
Touted as one of the first major feminist writers, Charlotte Perkins Gilman spent her life fighting to liberate women from the yoke of domesticity. This film is a stunning BBC dramatization of Gilman’s autobiographical account of a woman driven to madness by the repressive mores of Victorian culture. (1989, 76 minutes)

David Bell is a reference librarian at Booth Library. He earned an M.S. in library and information science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an M.A. in English literature at Northern Illinois University.

Presenter: Mary Caroline Simpson

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s own struggle with depression, a condition worsened by prescribed bed rest, compelled her to write The Yellow Wall-Paper, an influential short story that for some scholars exemplifies a feminist gothic sensibility. Rather than dwell on attempts by female artists to illustrate Gilman’s story, this lecture considers metaphors of confinement, repression, anger and desired freedom as expressed in artistic works by Dorothea Tanning, Francesca Woodman and Louise Bourgeois, among others, both within a feminist context and in light of evolved definitions of depression and its treatment.

Mary Caroline Simpson has a doctorate in art history from Indiana University-Bloomington and is an assistant professor at Eastern, where she teaches courses on the history of European and American art since 1800. Her research examines how Chicago’s museums, arts societies and collectors played important, but still under recognized, roles in the process of legitimizing different strains of modernist art both in the United States and internationally between 1945 and 1970.

Presenter: Jacquelyn Hines, Associate Director, Eastern Illinois University Counseling Center

This presentation will discuss signs and symptoms of depression, as well as resources on campus and how to get help for yourself or a loved one.

The Counseling Center provides personal counseling to more than 600 undergraduate and graduate students each year at Eastern. The center is staffed by psychologists, counselors and graduate students, and the services rendered to students are free, voluntary and confidential. The center’s staff is dedicated to assisting students in their pursuit of personal and academic growth, to helping students gain a better understanding and appreciation of themselves, and to supporting students as they make important decisions about their lives.

Presenter: Jeannie Ludlow, Coordinator of Women’s Studies

The late 19th century saw great changes in women’s real-life experiences with birth control and abortion. While the American Medical Association worked toward medicalization of women’s reproductive options and criminalization of abortion, many practitioners — both lay and professional — continued to help women realize their own reproductive decisions. This presentation will look at the political, medical and social contexts of women’s reproductivity, as well as the practices of birth control and abortion during Gilman’s adulthood.

Jeannie Ludlow is associate professor of English and coordinator of Women’s Studies at Eastern Illinois University and a former abortion care worker. Her publications include “Sometimes, It’s a Child and a Choice: Toward an Embodied Abortion Praxis” in the National Women Studies Association Journal and “Love and Goodness: Toward a New Abortion Politics” in Feminist Studies. Her research focuses on discourses of abortion and reproductive justice activism in the U.S. Ludlow is also secretary of the board of the Abortion Conversation Project and a member of the Abortion Care Network. She has a Ph.D. in American culture studies from Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Led by Janice Derr, Assistant Professor in Reference Services, Booth Library
The Yellow Wall-Paper can be interpreted in many ways, and Booth Library invites you to share your views on the story. We hope to have a lively discussion on the themes in the story and touch on some of the different interpretations of the work. All are welcome to attend. To prepare for the discussion, the library has several copies of the story available for checkout, and the story can be read online at www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1952.