Film screening: 'Charlotte Perkins Gilman: The Yellow Wall-Paper'

This film screening will be presented by David Bell, reference librarian at Booth Library, EIU.

Touted as one of the first major feminist writers, Charlotte Perkins Gilman spent her life fighting to liberate women from the yoke of domesticity. This film is a stunning BBC dramatization of Gilman’s autobiographical account of a woman driven to madness by the repressive mores of Victorian culture. (1989, 76 minutes)

David Bell is a reference librarian at Booth Library. He earned an M.S. in library and information science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an M.A. in English literature at Northern Illinois University.

This event is part of the exhibit “Literature of Prescription: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper'” that Booth Library will host from Sept. 23-Nov. 2.

More about the Exhibit

The exhibit examines a 19th-century writer’s challenge to the medical profession and the relationship between science and society. Artist and writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who was discouraged from pursuing a career to preserve her health, rejected the ideas in a terrifying short story titled ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper.’

The famous tale served as an indictment of the medical profession and the social conventions restricting women’s professional and creative opportunities.

For more information, please visit http://www.library.eiu.edu/exhibits/yellowwallpaper/