Welcome to Breaking Down Patriarchy. I'm Amy McPhee, All the Best. Today we will be discussing the first work of fiction on our list of essential texts. It's a short story called The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. And if you haven't read it or if you haven't read it in a while, then I encourage you to press pause on this podcast right now and

go read it really quick and then come back. Or even easier, you can listen to it. It's only about

40 minutes long and you can find it on Audible or for free on Libravox or YouTube. It was written in

1892, so it's in the public domain now, which means it's free and it's a really, really good

story. So just go read or listen to it if you haven't already and then come back. Okay, so welcome

back. Today we are going to be discussing Charlotte Perkins-Gillman's The Yellow Wallpaper.

But first, I want to introduce my reading partner, Shannon Johnson.

Hi, Shannon. Hi, Amy. So Shannon, why don't you start us off and just dive into the book and tell us

how we're going to start reading it? Okay. Okay. I'm really excited to talk about this story. It had been

since before I gave birth

myself that I had read this novel, probably in high school. I don't even remember reading it

in college. This is a deceptively simple tale. It functions as both a thrilling short story,

and it is quite short. And it's a parable on the dangers and

consequences of unchecked patriarchy. And so this is the last warning for anyone who

doesn't want spoilers, but I did want to go over the plot briefly. A young woman is brought to this

grand house for the summer by her physician husband. She has

mixed feelings about the house and she even mentions how romantic it would be if the house were

haunted in like the second paragraph. She has been unwell, but her husband doesn't think

anything's really wrong with her. And even though he thinks that she's okay, he hopes that this

enforced rest at this new environment will be good for her. And it's not until about a quarter

of the way into the story that we learned that she recently had a baby. And she expresses her love

for the baby, but she doesn't sound attached to him and she's not engaged with

...