The Literature of Prescription: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Yellow Wall-Paper”
May 6, 2012 – June 16, 2012
In the late nineteenth century, at a time when women were challenging traditional ideas about gender that excluded them from political and intellectual life, medical and scientific experts drew on notions of female weakness to justify inequality between the sexes. Artist and writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who was discouraged from pursuing a career to preserve her health, rejected these ideas in a terrifying short story titled “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” The famous tale served as an indictment of the medical profession and the social conventions restricting women’s professional and creative opportunities.
This exhibition was developed and produced by the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health.
