I try, over and over again, to imagine what it was like on this day in 1890 in those moments before Charlotte Perkins Gilman sat down to write her life-changing work, The Yellow Wallpaper. I know some of the facts: it was 103 degrees. The first draft took her two days. She was in Pasadena writing in a cottage across the way from her friend, Grace Channing.
Her daughter, Katherine, was four years old, and was somewhere about as her mother wrote. Charlotte was a Mom-Writer of the 19th Century, like I am a Mom-Writer of the 21st century.
I wonder what first words she scribbled on the page?
Did they make it into the final draft? The first words published were these: “ It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.”
Did she have any idea that the words she was writing would be so powerful to so many women for years to come?
Did she know it was her courage to write about a woman falling into insanity following postpartum depression would change the way women were treated in the future? Did she realize her fictional, unnamed lead character would be eerily familiar to many?
I have a copy of her diary from 1890 (edited by Denise D. Knight), which was the year she started writing in it diligently again for the first time after her breakdown in 1887. Her notes in the Summer are sparse. She did note she submitted the story to "The Howells" on August 28, 1890. I have been to the location where "the cottage" she wrote in used to be. It is now a church surrounded by stately trees in a mostly residential area.
The location is now across the street from the Pasadena Museum of History.
Other details about the Summer of 1890 and the writing of The Yellow Wallpaper are unknown to me.
What I do know is Charlotte Perkins Gilman inspires and delights me for many reasons.
She is a woman who faced serious depression throughout her life yet she lived more fully than many who are mentally healthy. I am taking these two days: June 6 and June 7, as a time to honor her life and her work. I plan to leverage my present day summer writing work accordingly.
The world was blessed and has been blessed continually because she chose to write on those 103 degree days in 1890 in Pasadena, California.
© 2012 by Julie Jordan Scott
Julie Jordan Scott has been a Life & Creativity Coach, Writer, Facilitator and Teleclass Leader since 1999. She is also an award winning Actor, Director, Artist and Mother Extraordinaire. She was twice the StoryTelling Slam champion in Bakersfield.
She inspires people to experience artistic rebirth via her programs, playshops, books, performances and simply being herself out in the world. She is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy-extraordinaire and mixed media artist whose Writing Camps and Writing Playgrounds permanently transform people's creative lives. Watch for the announcement of new programs coming in soon!
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