Just For the Record...

To start my blog for this week, I would like to investigate further on a point mentioned by Sophie, myself, and a few others that the narrator in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” most likely suffers from post-partum depression. After a visit to the Mayo-Clinic website, it is more than evident that she suffers from depression which then leads to her insanity. She changes both her sleeping and eating patterns, cries for little or no reason, loses her energy and motivation for activities, and retreats from her friends and family- all common and recognizable symptoms of post-partum depression.

In this sense, the husband may be at fault to a lesser extent than we decided during our discussion- at the top of page 425 he diagnoses his wife’s “condition” as “nervous depression.” It is only through his application of the age’s treatment for the illness that he is errant. By following the “rest cure” and forcing his wife to stay in the room with yellow wallpaper and removing her one outlet for creativity, writing, is grossly inappropriate for a woman in her condition and inevitably causes her insanity.

The rest of my blog I will dedicate to the numerous short stories that I have read over the last week.

In The Best American Short Stories 2007, I read “Toga Party” by John Barth and “Wait” by Roy Kesey. The first of these stories, “Toga Party,” is a tale about an old couple who is invited to a housewarming party. After the couple gains entry to the party, the story turns graphic- not only because of the author’s descriptions of promiscuous activities undertaken by an older generation, but also because all of the main characters systematically commit suicide. Although funny at first, the story’s depressing finale took the flavor out of the humorous dialogue. When reflecting on the story “Wait,” I realize that it also had its ridiculous moments, which left me to wonder whether the story was based on an unusual and real circumstance or if the author simply got carried away. I will not reveal too much for I genuinely liked the story, but I will give a small taste of what I am describing- at one point the protagonist was nearly struck by a small meteor while in an airport. The narration style, however, makes the events of the story seem much less unlikely than they actually are.

In the 2006 edition of The Best American Short Stories, I read two stories in which the protagonists find different ways of dealing with the town bully. In “Refresh, Refresh” by Benjamin Percy, two boys, whose fathers are stationed oversees, practice fighting one another in order to toughen up to face another boy. They eventually take revenge during a hunting trip by stealing the antagonist’s guns and scaring him while he is asleep in his tent. However, soon the bully is no longer the antagonist, for he learns that his father has been killed on duty, and the boys begin to pity him. They then turn against the town’s recruitment officer, but eventually enlist themselves. In Nathan Englander’s “How We Avenged the Blums,” a group of young Jewish boys attempt to team up against a local anti-Semite who has taken to attacking one family in particular, the Blums. After training for months with an Israeli veteran, the confrontation escalates to a small scale war. They end up enlisting the help of a larger boy to attack the anti-Semite and the story ends with the kids standing over their fallen enemy. All of these were entertaining stories and definitely worth a read.