Who knew American Horror Story would dish out such literary gems?



I just finished reading a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilmore called The Yellow Wallpaper.


I came across this little gem while watching American Horror Story. Have you guys seen this show?! It is so bizarre and creepy that I won’t watch it if I have to leave the house before the sun comes up, seriously some episodes are just that scary. Anyways, if you haven’t seen the show there was this one episode where the adulterous maid was explaining to the mistress of the house (yes, I said mistress. If you have a maid and live in a mansion in my eyes your title is automatically upgraded to mistress), that men are crazy possessive types. To illustrate her point, the maid described the story about The Yellow Wallpaper.

Moira the maid to the Mistress of the house:

Haven’t you read “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilmore? Her husband—a doctor—locks her away in the upstairs bedroom to recuperate from a slight hysterical tendency. Staring at the yellow wallpaper day after day, she begins to hallucinate that there are women trapped in the pattern. Half mad she scrapes off the wallpaper to set the women free. When her husband finally unlocks the door, he finds her circling the room, touching the wallpaper, whispering “I finally got out of here.” Since the beginning of time, men find excuses to lock women away. They make up diseases, like hysteria. Do you know where that word comes from? The Greek word for “uterus.”

(I tried to find a youtube clip of the scene but of course FX took it down because of legal reasons, blah blah)

She made it sound so interesting and desperately sad that I just had to read it. Also, I’m not sure if you all care how I come across the books I read, but I kind of feel like how I end up with most my books is a part of that book’s story, and I want to share it with everyone.

So more about the book, the good news is that you can all get the story for free! That’s right! (Said in Pauly Regan’s voice!) I was able to download it for free via the Kindle, which is like crack by the way. At first I was so against getting one for all of the obvious reasons, you lose the touch and feel of a book, it’s electronic so you’re going to be iffy about taking it near the water, ect . . . But now that I have one I love it, except for the fact that I spend way too much money on books now. Being able to buy any book I want, at any time shouldn’t be an option for someone like me. Like I said it’s like crack, you know, if you were a crackhead. 

More good news about the story is that it’s short, really, really, short, as in read in thirty minutes short. So no excuses my busy friends; free, short, and a good read, this story is like the holy grail of books. Although I’m only guessing it’s like the holy grail because I don’t really know what that is, except that maybe it has something to do with Indiana Jones, but again I’m not sure because I haven’t seen any of those movies.

As for the plot line, there really isn’t any point in going into depth about the story because it’s so short and Moira explained it pretty well. But I will say that I liked how the author told the story from the woman’s perspective as a type of journal; it really displayed the wife’s descent into madness. I also appreciated that Perkins gave the impression that someone else had also lost his or her mind in that room. She describes this “smooch” along the bottom of the walls, as though someone had rubbed their shoulder along the walls over and over to create this mark. Can you imagine walking in on someone creeping round and round a room?! It freaks me out, especially because people crawling about terrifies me, nothing good comes from people crawling. Ever.

So yeah, y'all should read it.

Also, my husband says that I’m going to get some kind of emo cult following if I don’t start reading and posting about more uplifting books. Well I can tell you right now my next book is a crime mystery, so chances are it will not be a departure from my past posts.

And onto the next …. I started Every Secret Thing by Laura Lippman.

PS. Still reading The Grimm Fairy Tales and the first ones I’ve read have been kind of disappointing.




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