From: maureenw@sco.COM (Maureen Wilkes)
Subject: Re: The Literary Canon & Women
Organization: SCO Canada, Inc.
Date: Wed, 19 Aug 1992 14:30:00 GMT

In article <1992Aug18.145500.20638@morrow.stanford.edu> francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir) writes:
>Maureen Wilkes writes:
>
>	This triggered a memory of THE YELLOW WALLPAPER (author??!?), a 
>	pre-feminist indictment of the 19th-century psychological practice 
>	of denying women access to books and stimulating conversation in 
>	order to give their poor little brains a rest -- when in fact all 
>	they needed was to be taken seriously.  The story traces the mental 
>	disintegration of a creative young woman ("high strung", according 
>	to the doctors her husband hired), who goes mad after being condemned 
>	to a life without reading or writing.  Her daydreams become 
>	nightmarish hallucinations under the tyrrany of the men who control 
>	her life.  Is anyone else familiar with this work?  My memories of 
>	it are rather sketchy.  Anyone know the author?  
>
>A woman, perhaps? Does it occur that the thesis behind this novel (?) is
>quite outrageously sexist?

It is describing an outrageously sexist society, in which married women 
were chattel and ALL women were regarded as little more than walking wombs.
It was a very small section of society that admitted women into the 
intellectual world. Women were considered to be temperamentally unsuited
for the rigours of intellectual discourse.  Ever hear the term "weaker sex"?
The women that did manage to make their voices heard
were extraordinary examples, not the rule.  

>Are women so weak that they are driven mad by
>some assole who wants to play Svengali to his wife's Trilby (have I got
>this right?).

In the story, as I recall it (and someone please set me straight if I'm
mistaken), she wasn't just sitting around, saying, "Oh, I'm a weak woman
being driven mad.  Woe is me and pass the tea."  She was physically cut 
off from the outside world by her husband and the doctors.  She had
no access to other people, no access to books, and was forbidden to write.
It was the 19th century, Francis.  She couldn't just call up a lawyer on
the phone, or read newsgroups on her computer, or fax her friends.  In that
world, women had as much freedom as their husbands allowed, and the law 
upheld that notion.
As the character's emotional withdrawal escalated, her "treatment" became 
more and more severe.  She didn't swoon over the edge, she was clearly
driven there.
I don't think the author was asserting that the men were consciously 
malicious -- the ignorance of the times led them to believe that they
were truly doing the right thing.  It was their lack of knowledge and
understanding that made them monstrous.   

>The fact of the matter is that by the time the 19th Century
>rolled around, there were, and continued to be, a number of women writing

Again, these were pioneering exceptions to a very prevalent rule.
Yes, women have demanded their proper place in society, and YES it is
now up to us to make ourselves heard, but to deny that society ever
repressed women is as foolish as to deny that we ever burned witches.

>(I'm talking about England, of course. Christ knows what was happening in 
>the Cradle of Democracy and Liberty). 

Yes, but He's not telling.


Maureen Wilkes
Xref: sparky rec.arts.books:14681 soc.history:7373