What did you like best about The Yellow Wallpaper? What did you like least?
Many can relate to the psychological phenomenon pareidolia, which can cause us to see faces or images of significance on walls or in patterns. The Rorschach inkblot test uses directed pareidolia to gain insight into a person’s feelings and mental landscape. In ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses this familiar experience as an allegory for the destructive effects of patriarchal control and understimulation on 19th century women.
Which character – as performed by Kitty Hendrix – was your favorite?
The short story unfolds as a sequence of journal entries by the female narrator. Kitty Hendrix’s performance gives expression to the young woman’s longing for escape from the mansion, her curiosity and contempt for the yellow wallpaper. I particularly enjoyed the conspiratorial tones in the narrator’s journal. Hendrix gives these moments cheekiness and urgency, for example, when the narrator hears John coming up the stairs and closes the journal entry for the day.

The character of the young woman is suffering from what is described by her physician husband, John, as a ‘nervous depression’ shortly after having a child. Hendrix’s performance conveys the intensity of her suffering but also the three-dimensionality of her life before her husband (and brother) imposed their idea of a rest cure on her.

The audiobook is an iconic, tragic and creepy story of a young woman’s descent in madness. I found it very enjoyable.

Any additional comments?
I was voluntarily provided this review copy audiobook at no charge by the author, publisher and/or narrator.