Read the excerpt from "Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'" The little book is valued by alienists and as a good specimen of one kind of literature. It has, to my knowledge, saved one woman from a similar fate—so terrifying her family that they let her out into normal activity and she recovered. What does Gilman indicate is the impact of her work? Women are more likely to seek employment that satisfies them. Women are more likely to have a voice in their own treatment. Women are more likely to frighten their families in order to escape them. Women are more likely to read literature that they can relate to.
