Green Herrings in a Yellow Room: A Counter Production of The Yellow Wallpaper

Abstract

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is a designer’s work of critical fabulation. Published in 1892, the short story follows an unnamed woman prescribed a “rest cure” by her husband, John. Confined to a room wrapped in gothic yellow wallpaper, the narrator becomes obsessed with its patterns. As her mind deteriorates, she sees a woman trapped behind the paper. This production reimagines Charlotte’s bedroom as not yellow, but green—a rich, vibrant green laced with the medium responsible for its provocative coloration: arsenic. The toxic pigment, invented in the late 18th century, induces bodily ailments, mental instability, and even death when used in textiles. Interiors threatened tenants with toxins as this green spread through 19th-century Europe before reaching New England and our narrator. Though known as an author and suffragette, Charlotte was first a designer. As a student in the inaugural class of the Rhode Island School of Design, she studied the arts just miles from the ports where the green pigment began its early residence. Her writing draws from arsenic publications, her scenes mimic medical case studies, and archives suggest she was aware of these toxic walls. This theatrical table reading positions the authoring of The Yellow Wallpaper within the simultaneous stories of the arsenic wallpaper. Why does the author mimic material traces of the green while redirecting her readers to the yellow? When does the color transition from literal to abstract? This work recontextualizes the foundational feminist text by unfabulating the story through design—questioning Charlotte’s literary misdirections and the public discourse surrounding the toxic color.