title: Wild Unrest: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Making of "The Yellow Wall-Paper"
author:  Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz 
description: Reformer and author Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who in 1890 wrote the hair-raising, semiautobiographical, and now iconic short story "The Yellow Wall-Paper," documenting an isolated wife's descent from nervous illness into madness, was intimate with her subject. In 1887, when she had a nervous breakdown, Perkins Gilman sought the rest cure of famed neurologist S. Weir Mitchell, and later, she claimed she wrote "The Yellow Wall-Paper" in protest against Mitchell and his methods, which limited women's intellectual activities (though, Horowitz says, probably not as much as the story indicated). But Smith College historian Horowitz, drawing on the personal writings of Perkins Gilman and her first husband, artist Charles Walter Stetson, and Mitchell's abundant papers, concludes that the story was a cri de coeur against Stetson and the traditional marriage he had demanded. Perkins Gilman accused Mitchell, according to Horowitz, primarily to protect her daughter, Katharine, and also her dear friend Grace Channing, who married Stetson after his divorce from Perkins Gilman, and raised Katharine. This convincing, absorbing, and perceptive book should find a general readership as well as an important place with women's studies and psychology students. 20 b&amp;w illus. (Nov.) (c) <br />(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: The	Unrestful	Cure:
  Charlotte	Perkins	Gilman	and	"The	Yellow	Wallpaper"
  JEFFREY	BERMAN
  
  e-Book	2015	International	Psychotherapy	Institute
  From	The	Talking	Cure	by	Jeffrey	Berman
  Copyright	©	1985	by	JEFFREY	BERMAN
  All	Rights	Reserved
  Created	in	the	United	States	of	America
  
  The	Unrestful	Cure:	Charlotte	Perkins	Gilman	and
  "The	Yellow	Wallpaper"
  IF	 Charlotte	 Perkins	 Gilman's	 name	 does	 not	 command	 the	 instant
  recognition	of	an	Elizabeth	Cady	Stanton,	Jane	Ad-dams,	or	Susan	B.	Anthony,
  it	 is	 not	 because	 her	 achievement	 was	 less.	 Social	 historians	 agree	 on	 the
  brilliance	of	her	ideas	and	the	extent	to	which	her	influential	books	helped	to
  transform	the	condition	of	women	in	early	twentieth-century	America.	The
  following	judgments	are	representative.	"The	only	systematic	theory	linking
  the	demand	for	suffrage	with	the	long	sweep	of	history	was	that	of	Charlotte
  Perkins	Gilman,	the	most	influential	woman	thinker	in	the	pre-World	War	I
  generation	in	the	United	States."1	"O