Carmel Magazine

uring Women's History Month, I revisited some classics: Char- lotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892); Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" (1899); and Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye" (1970). All three works challenge contemporary thought for the time periods in which they were written— Gilman challenging the medical establish- ment's diagnosis of hysteria in women; Chopin challenging the turn-of-the-century notion that adultery as subject matter was off-limits for women authors; and Morrison's book examining another layer of racism in America. Crucial as markers on a historical timeline of women's contributions to the liter- ary canon, these three books are also riveting reading, aside from their historical significance, or what they assert about men, women, mar- riage, sex, gender and race. The Awakening By Kate Chopin "The Awakening," while also required for any Women's Lit class, is a book you can read for sheer pleasure. I honestly don't know when I've been more transported by a novel. It's a deli- cious love story, and it's more than that. You will not want it to end. The book is set alternately in New Orleans and Grand Isle, Louisiana. Chopin's descriptions of both places are as beautifully nuanced as are her insights into Edna Pontellier, the protagonist, who upon a summer vacationing in Grand Isle, begins to yearn for a different life—a life that at the time, was only available to men. Her yearning is most evident on the night she learns to swim. "A certain ungovernable dread hung about her when in the water…but that night she was like a little tottering, stum- bling, clutching child, who of a sudden realizes its powers and walks for the first time alone, boldly and with overconfidence. She could have shouted for joy…as with a sweeping stroke or two she lifted her body to the surface of the water. She wanted to swim far out, where no woman had swum before." From that point on, there is no stopping Edna as she seeks out what she needs—autonomy, solitude, creative space, and men who are not her husband. "The Awakening," in its frank, unapologetic treatment of the subject of adultery, was so far ahead of its time that it aroused, on its publica- tion in 1899, "a storm of controversy violent enough to end its author's young career" (Elaine Showalter). One reviewer commented that the book could've been brilliant, had it had been written by a man; by a woman, it was dis- graceful. Chopin, aghast at the reaction to her novel, published an apology, a fact that sad- dens me. Chopin never knew her shunned book became a cherished classic, possibly one of the most taught books in women's lit- erature curricula. Read it and let it take you to turn-of-the-cen- tury Grand Isle and New Orleans, and deep into Edna's intellect and longing. The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman "The Yellow Wallpaper," a short story, is based on Gilman's own experience with Dr. Weir Mitchell's famous rest cure. In the late 19th/ early 20th century, women were diagnosed with "hys- teria" at epidemic proportions. The so-called hys- teria was really just the expression of dissatisfac- tion and discontent. Women were still legally the property of their fathers or husbands, and had 86 C A R M E L M A G A Z I N E • S P R I N G / S U M M E R 2 0 1 5 IN REVIEW BY MELANIE BISHOP Swimming in Forbidden Waters, Finding the Cures that Ail Women and Internalized Racism D

• Cover