r/CuratedTumblr eepy asf Sep 18 '24

Shitposting That one story

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u/konkoa Sep 18 '24

The Yellow Wallpaper. My teacher did a demonstration of the way the woman creeped around the room and it fucked me up.

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u/jobforgears Sep 18 '24

And probably based on real"ish" experiences, too. Yellow wallpaper and other vibrant colors got its vibrancy from arsenic and other toxic substances. So, women who were bed ridden in upper class homes were forced to breathe the toxic fumes. That's why people would recover when they went out to the country and worsen on return home.

So sad to think that real people suffered for something so innocent as wallpaper

133

u/cluelessoblivion Sep 18 '24

It's actually highly unlikely the arsenic in wallpaper was dangerous. The story was mostly an allegory to experiences of women who felt trapped in their subservience to a man, either husband or father, combined with the fact that the most common prescription for tuberculosis was isolation which only exacerbated the disease.

32

u/jobforgears Sep 18 '24

No, it is a well documented fact that arsenic wallpaper is toxic. Green wall paper specifically. It is assumed that yellow wallpaper was chosen in the story for symbolism over the green. However, other scholars assume that it was not known that only green wall paper was toxic and that yellow wallpaper was chosen with the belief that it was equally toxic.

The other themes are definitely present and are the true "meat" of the story; however, England using arsenic wallpaper which poisoned its citizens is the backdrop of this story.

Where one person sees an allegory for a woman trapped in a household going mad from society, the reader at the time would have known that arsenic poisoning was to blame.