60MBC4: The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

It’s already time for short story number four! Come along for the read?

Happy Friday book-clubbers!

I hope your April is off to a fine start. Mine has been full of snow, sauna and spring sunshine as I’ve been in northern Sweden on holiday. It’s provided a great opportunity to dust off the cobwebs, and get started on April’s Sixty-Minute Book Club reading.

Last month, we dove into ‘Story of Your Life’ by Ted Chiang, our most ambitious read of the year (so far, anyway). It certainly made for a rich and rather philosophical discussion when we met last week to talk about it. Don’t worry if you missed the session, I’ve added a short recap after this post.

But now: onto April’s story. One that I promise you fits the sixty-minute rule. But despite being a little ‘slighter’, it’s still a story which packs a punch.

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🌼 ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Originally published in 1892, The Yellow Wallpaper is a classic of feminist literature, told through a woman’s journal entries as she convalesces after having a baby.

At first glance, our narrator has all the trappings of a comfortable upper-middle-class life… if only she could get rid of that awful yellow wallpaper. As the story progresses, though, the gaudy decor begins to represent something deeper, clawing to get out. We start to wonder: is she really being taken care of…. or hidden away?

I first read this gothic horror short story when I was in my late teens and it stuck with me for the terrifying glimpse it gives into how women’s everyday experiences (and responses to them) have historically been pathologised and medicalised.

Indeed Charlotte Perkins Gilman based the story on her own harrowing experiences with 19th-century mental health treatments, and her writing is all the more powerful for it. Her narrator’s descent into obsession is subtle yet disorienting, and its commentary on the connections between women’s autonomy, creative repression, and mental illness still resonates more than a century later.

This is a short, sharp read that paved the way for whole swathes of women’s literature. Put simply: it’s a must-read of the canon, and I can’t wait to hear what you make of it.

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Psst! Don’t forget that for the weekly prompts, chat discussions and access to the live discussion link you’ll need to be a subscriber (whether free or paid).

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💡 The need-to-knows

‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

Published: 1892
Average reading time: ~30–40 minutes
Themes: Mental health, autonomy, gender roles, repression, the domestic sphere

• ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ was published long ago enough that it’s available to read free online (Project Gutenberg is a good place to start with plenty of versions, including ones you can send direct to your e-reader). You can also find many editions in paperback.

• For audiobook fans, I enjoyed this reading by Jamie Loftus on YouTube (approx. 35 minutes)

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What to consider while reading

This is a story filled with a slow-release sense of malaise and steadily ratcheting tension. Here are some themes to keep watch for as you read:

• The wallpaper: How does the narrator’s relationship with the wallpaper evolve? What might it represent?

• Freedom and confinement: What does the story suggest about the spaces women are allowed to inhabit - physically, emotionally, and creatively?

• Voice and control: How does the use of journal entries affect your understanding of the narrator’s state of mind? How reliable does she seem to you?

• Historical context: How might the story have been read differently in 1892 than today? What does it say about how far we’ve come - and how far we haven’t?

We’ll discuss some of these, and others, from next week in the chat.

Looking ahead

You have well over three weeks to read ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, before we meet on Tuesday 29 April to discuss it. I anticipate another meaty discussion!

Starting next week, I’ll post prompts and tidbits via the subscriber chat. This is only available to subscribers, so make sure you sign up to access.

And please remember that these discussions will likely contain spoilers, so it’s best to have read the story before you head into the threads.

📆 Date for your diaries

This month we’ll connect virtually on Tuesday 29 April, at 6 PM CEST (9am PST / 12pm EST / 5pm BST) for a one-hour discussion about ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’.

Our session to discuss ‘Story of your Life’ last week was thoughtful, fun, and occasionally mind-bending! I learnt a lot, and I have no doubts that this month’s meet will be the same.

Finally, the meeting link is available only to subscribers, so sign up to ensure you can join.

📚 Happy reading!

That should be all the info you need to get started on our fourth short story of 2025.

If you have any questions or anything needs clarification, drop me a message here in comments, in the chat, or via DM.

And if you’re excited to get started with ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, please hit the heart so I know!

Thanks,

Emma

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In brief: March’s live discussion of ‘Story of your Life’

[Spoilers ahead! If you’ve not yet read ‘Story of your Life’, come back to this after you have].

We had such a thought-provoking discussion last week. Together we tackled the longest story of the experiment, and whilst the physics and linguistics challenged some of us (oh hi), it ended up being one of the most emotional and wide-ranging conversations of the club to date. As ever, this summary doesn’t capture everything, but here are a few highlights.

• Knowing the ending vs. experiencing it unfold. Several of us had already seen Arrival, the film based on the story, which very much affected how we read the text. Dinesh noted that knowing the ending made the story feel more like an intellectual exercise, while Ruth (who hadn’t seen the film) described the story unfolding in real time, with the gradual revelation of the daughter’s life and Louise’s relationship with Gary. Those of us who had already seen the film certainly wished we could experience the ‘clean read’ of the ones who hadn’t!

• Time, memory, and structure. We also discussed Chiang’s masterful structure. Dinesh pointed out how the story’s use of tenses (past for the alien storyline, future for the daughter, and present for the moment of conception) mirrors Louise’s shifting perception of time as she learns the alien language. He also highlighted the moment the tenses collapse into one another (the bowl scene) as a turning point in the narrative— a great spot which I had missed.

• Free will vs. determinism. One of the central questions we debated was whether Louise chooses her future, or is physically unable to act differently? Dinesh argued she has no choice: she knows the future, but can't change it. I leaned more toward the idea that she does choose to have her daughter despite knowing how her short life will unfold, mirroring the idea that we all know we will die one day, but we choose to live each day regardless. This prompted a broader philosophical tangent: if we knew our futures, how would we each live? Would we still feel we had agency? Or is the illusion of free will what keeps us moving forward?

• The emotional core. For all the technical complexity of the story with its physics and linguistic theory, we kept returning to the emotional heart of the story: Louise’s love for her daughter, her quiet grief, and her acceptance of the inevitable. Ruth described it as ‘an incredibly human, terribly sad’ thread running through the more cerebral ‘scaffolding’ of physics and language. The group agreed the story wouldn’t have been so effective without the emotional side of the narrative.

• Why did Chiang choose Louise to be his narrator? We ended by reflecting on why Chiang chose a mother as his narrator. Was it to allow for deeper emotional resonance? To access the story’s heart? Or to explore time, lineage, and inevitability through a generational lens? We didn’t land on the answer, but it was fun discussing it.

So many ideas, and not enough time to explore them all as much as we’d like. If you couldn’t make it but read along, we’d love to hear your thoughts, just drop them in the comments or the group chat.

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❤️ Thank you for reading Scrambled Eggs. Enjoyed this post? Hit the heart to let me know.