Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-Paper" and the History of Its Publiation and Reception: A Critical Edition and Documentary Casebook (Hardcover)

The enterprise, itself, deserves recognition for its prodigious and painstaking scholarship and meticulous editing. A product of an undergraduate course on scholarly editing, Julie Bates Dock gave her class a "simple collation exercise" on Gilman's The Yellow Wall-Paper. Students and teacher alike became more and more enthused as they searched for relationships among various editions of the story. This enthusiasm resulted in a collaborative publication by Julie Bates Dock and three of her students.

In a chapter entitled The Legend of The Yellow Wall-Paper, Dock not only recounts how the story has become one of literature's perennial bestsellers, but also warn us that "in its twenty-five-year odyssey of rediscovery by literary critics...the story has picked up along the way an assortment of blemishes and distortions, from textual anomalies to skewed accounts of its publication history to misinformation about its contemporary reception." This should be enough to make any academic want to research its history.

The evidence of casual distortions that change the import of original texts as shown in the present case emphasizes the importance of textual criticism and traditional modes of criticism. Dock says, "...the use of documents is affected by critical trends and by critics' biases and expectations...The feminist critics of the early 1970s, intent on establishing women authors in the American literary canon, had a stake in portraying the story as a victimized piece of literature. The notion that Gilman suffered condemnation from editors and readers outside the story tidily echoed the narrator's victimization within the story." Dock then goes on to cite two examples where major feminist critics came to unexamined and hasty conclusions about the publication of the story.

Dock also provides evidence to argue that omission of a few words distorts Gilman's focus. For example, the words, "in marriage," in the sentence, "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that (in marriage)." Gilman was against the institution of marriage, but not necessarily against men in general!

Legends that Gilman had to struggle to get her story published, that most readers thought of it as a "ghost story," that it received an especially distasteful reception from the male medical community are also put to rest, as evidence simply does not support these beliefs.

Dock also points out discrepancies in Gioman's own accounts as well, such as her inaccurate and varying dates and titles as well as her claim that Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, her own physician, altered his treatment of neurasthenia after reading The Yellow Wall-Paper. This is, as Dock points out, a case of "he says/she says conundrums."

The book is wonderfully embellished with photographs of Charlotte Perkins Stetson, W.D. Howells, Horace E. Scudder and Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, as well as with other visuals.

The book also cites interesting excerpts from Gilman's autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Correspondence. It explains or compiles painstaking commentaries on textual matters, selection of copy, publication history, authorial practice and preference, editorial emendations and many other publication matters as well as reviews of the story which appeared in various magazines. The Appendix provides a history of the printing of The Yellow Wall-Paper from 1892 until 1997.

This is a scholarly book, to be sure, but it is one that is also extremely interesting. In addition to learning the history of The Yellow Wall-Paper, we also learn much about Gilman's motivations, her aesthetics of writing and her own views on both marriage and men.