Tag: postpartum depression
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Charlotte Gilman, Weir Mitchell, and “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Jack RiggsMorgantown, West Virginia, United States Charlotte Perkins Gilman lived a complex and controversial life.1 A prolific writer and lecturer, she advocated for the social, economic, and civic liberation of women.1 She was also a nationalist, eugenicist, and white supremacist.1 Despite her prominent feminist role, “today, Charlotte is primarily remembered for her haunting story [‘The…
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Queen Juana: The mad or the betrayed?
Juliana MenegakisLondon, United Kingdom Juana of Castile is known by her epithet “the Mad.” But was she truly insane? Infanta Juana of Castile and Aragon was born in 1479 to Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, the famed Catholic Monarchs who united Spain. Juana had two older siblings, Isabella and John, and…
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The Yellow Wallpaper: The flawed prescription
Mahek Khwaja Karachi, Pakistan Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote her short story The Yellow Wallpaper in nineteenth-century America when gendered norms prevailed in society at large and notably in medicine. In a previous article, “Charlotte Perkins Gilman, apostle of women’s liberation,” (2019) published in Hektoen International, George Dunea speaks at length on how Perkins’ writings are peppered…
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The curse of the blessing
Medha PandeNainital, India For the wedding of a second cousin, I visited my ancestral village for the first time at the age of twenty-five. The tiny hamlet is in a quaint, expansive valley in the middle Himalayas of Uttarakhand, India. The once prosperous region is struggling under the pressure of out-migration to the plain areas.1…
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman, apostle of women’s liberation
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote much about the state of women in society, publishing the still widely acclaimed short story, The Yellow Wallpaper (1892). She also wrote other essays, somewhat colored by her own life experiences. Her father had left his family when she and her brother were…