Our second episode is live, with Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” A classic psychological terror about Victorian modes of dealing with perceived feminine emotions! Listen here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1385083/5698684-the-yellow-wallpaper.mp3?blob_id=23380966&download=true
Perkins Gilman’s most famous story was actually a semi-autobiographical horror about her postpartum depression. As a child, her father abandoned her family and she was raised by her aunts alongside her mother. One aunt was a suffragist and the other was the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This beginning likely led the path to her becoming a firm fixture as a Utopian Feminist.
It’s believed she had romantic relationships with women both as a young woman and adulthood. She was married to two men during her life, divorcing the first one. She also carried on a domestic partnership with one woman and raised her daughter with close female friends for a time.
After a successful writing career and leaving her mark on early Feminist movements, she eventually ended her life, choosing to die via chloroform rather than cancer, at the age of 75.
Sound effects for the podcast were created by Jonathan Shaw, Lebaston100, Straget, Benboncan, and others on freesound.org.
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