A Glittering Shell

The probable setting for a hypothetical, early-1970s remake of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1891 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” in which a woman trying to get over a nervous breakdown is driven even more mad by the yellow wallpaper in her room.

According to the Wikipedia link above, the story was made into a short film in the 1970s (there were several other adaptations as well). It is a haunting, beautfiully written short story – I highly recommend it. GIlman was an author, lecturer and feminist who based the story upon her own “Rest Cure” from which she recovered when she abandoned first the treatment and then her husband and went to California.

It would probably be best to abandon this sort of interior decoration, too. It looks like the lobby of a hotel in hell. The book calls it “a glittering shell in a living room of strictly modern overtones.” That’s a nice word for what this is.