Yellow: the Colour of Madness

Yellow is a colour I often think about;
Where other colours whisper, Yellow wants to shout!

This quote from a poem by Margaret Jean Adam speaks to the colour of the wallpaper in the room in which an intelligent woman finds herself mostly confined, It is in the late 19th century that American author Dorothy Perkins Gilman puts pen to paper to write a compelling story of a young mother suffering post-partum depression. With skill and compassion, Gilman draws her protagonist gently down into madness, a journey we share through journal entries. For the unnamed narrator of this tale, the bars on the windows of her bedroom, and the metal rings in the wall do not alarm her , although they may infer to the reader that the room perhaps did not, as represented by her husband, serve as a nursery.
Partly due to her depression, and partly due to limitations placed on her activity by her husband, a doctor, she spends far too much time in this "atrocious nursery", concentrating on the only notable feature in the room--the yellow wallpaper.
When asked why she wrote it, Gilman confessed that she had once come near to a complete breakdown and contrary to the doctor's orders of bedrest and no work of a creative sort, wrote herself out of it. She wanted to change how women in depression were treated and to some extent, she believed she achieved that purpose.
Brilliantly conceived and written, this book is enhanced by the reading of Rosy McEwen, whose mildly British accent lends an air of times past to the story.

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