WHAT!? "Appropriate for academic and women's studies collections" sounds like the kiss of death for a literary work, and that should not happen to Benigna Machiavelli. This utterly delightful work was passed to me by a (male) friend and, well, ok, I confess it sat on my shelf for months while I continued with my usual fare of crime, warfare, and science fiction. Then one day it was raining too hard to go out and I ran out of books. This is something I usually take great care to prevent as I love a good yarn when I have the time, usually a good "feisty" yarn. In desperation I picked Benigna up and started to read . . . and was hooked. Ms. Gilman clearly understands and delights in the human situation. She describes a young girl facing and solving the problems of her day with wit and humor that goes way beyond her gender. So I say, "To hell with dusty "women's studies collections." This is a great read for anyone with even a smidgeon of interest in the workings of the human mind, and it is an especially great read for any man interested in women.

This work by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is the fictional memoir of a girl grown to womanhood on her own terms. At an early age she decides to become a "good villian" and use her considerable intellect and common sense to make her own life, and the lives of those around her, better. The heroine of the story tackles everything, from obtaining supplies for her school, saving her sister from a would-be seducer, and rescuing the family from their own abusive father, to running her own boarding house, matchmaking for her sister, and helping her mother heal and grow. She succeeds, with wit and style. And Charlotte Perkins Gilman succeeds in creating a highly readable work that both teaches and heals the reader by portraying a better way of life, without preaching.

Excellent choices. Highly recommended for your Womens Studies research or just for a pleasure read. I particularly love "The Yellow Wallpaper." A fascinating look in the shackled mind of stifled feminine creativity.

This book is inspirational as well as educational by transitioning between Romanticism and Realism. The work challenges the reader to decide whether it refers simply to the prospect of salvation for a man convicted of stealing. Also questions are raised that is it possible that through the naturalistic view that Hugh's theft he can be excused by his unfortunate environment and heredity. Davis is an insightful and thoughtful writer, and this book represents that.

This slender casebook of an academic search represents the first authoritative text of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wall-Paper since it was originally published in 1892. It includes book reviews and excerpts of literary and social commentaries that reflect the story's critical reception; it publishes lists of editorial emendations and variants of the story in important editions since 1892 and it gives a listing of textual sources for more than one hundred reprintings of the story in anthologies and textbooks.

The enterprise, itself, deserves recognition for its prodigious and painstaking scholarship and meticulous editing. A product of an undergraduate course on scholarly editing, Julie Bates Dock gave her class a "simple collation exercise" on Gilman's The Yellow Wall-Paper. Students and teacher alike became more and more enthused as they searched for relationships among various editions of the story. This enthusiasm resulted in a collaborative publication by Julie Bates Dock and three of her students.

In a chapter entitled The Legend of The Yellow Wall-Paper, Dock not only recounts how the story has become one of literature's perennial bestsellers, but also warn us that "in its twenty-five-year odyssey of rediscovery by literary critics...the story has picked up along the way an assortment of blemishes and distortions, from textual anomalies to skewed accounts of its publication history to misinformation about its contemporary reception." This should be enough to make any academic want to research its history.

The evidence of casual distortions that change the import of original texts as shown in the present case emphasizes the importance of textual criticism and traditional modes of criticism. Dock says, "...the use of documents is affected by critical trends and by critics' biases and expectations...The feminist critics of the early 1970s, intent on establishing women authors in the American literary canon, had a stake in portraying the story as a victimized piece of literature. The notion that Gilman suffered condemnation from editors and readers outside the story tidily echoed the narrator's victimization within the story." Dock then goes on to cite two examples where major feminist critics came to unexamined and hasty conclusions about the publication of the story.

Dock also provides evidence to argue that omission of a few words distorts Gilman's focus. For example, the words, "in marriage," in the sentence, "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that (in marriage)." Gilman was against the institution of marriage, but not necessarily against men in general!

Legends that Gilman had to struggle to get her story published, that most readers thought of it as a "ghost story," that it received an especially distasteful reception from the male medical community are also put to rest, as evidence simply does not support these beliefs.

Dock also points out discrepancies in Gioman's own accounts as well, such as her inaccurate and varying dates and titles as well as her claim that Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, her own physician, altered his treatment of neurasthenia after reading The Yellow Wall-Paper. This is, as Dock points out, a case of "he says/she says conundrums."

The book is wonderfully embellished with photographs of Charlotte Perkins Stetson, W.D. Howells, Horace E. Scudder and Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, as well as with other visuals.

The book also cites interesting excerpts from Gilman's autobiography, The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Correspondence. It explains or compiles painstaking commentaries on textual matters, selection of copy, publication history, authorial practice and preference, editorial emendations and many other publication matters as well as reviews of the story which appeared in various magazines. The Appendix provides a history of the printing of The Yellow Wall-Paper from 1892 until 1997.

This is a scholarly book, to be sure, but it is one that is also extremely interesting. In addition to learning the history of The Yellow Wall-Paper, we also learn much about Gilman's motivations, her aesthetics of writing and her own views on both marriage and men.

The Crux is essential reading for anyone seriously interested in the writings of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Jennifer S. Tuttle's is to be commended for bringing it to readers in this excellent edition. After having read most of Gilman's other fiction, I will admit that I put off reading this one because of its reputation as "the book about venereal disease" (sexually transmitted diseases). I feared it would be didactic, heavy handed, and depressing. Instead, it's like the best of Gilman's "optimistic reform" books: it treats its serious subject with a light touch, conveying its important ideas through appealing characters and a strong plot with Gilman's typical "happy ending." (Some readers might argue that the ending is a bit implausible, but that's part of the interest of this set of Gilman's writings.) At times, it is laugh-out-loud funny. Also, it's not entirely accurate to say that the book is "about" venereal disease, for although the last third of the book discusses the dangers women faced from sexually transmitted diseases in the years before adequate cures had been discovered, there is much more to the story. It portrays the opportunities for self discovery open to women who move from the stultifying conditions of New England villages to the open life in a new city in the Colorado mountains. The women characters (on whom the story focuses) range from young unmarried women to a seemingly dried-up old maid, a woman doctor, and one of literature's most delightful grandmothers.

My only serious objection to this edition is that University of Delaware Press, for some unaccountable reason, has elected to publish this book only in an expensive hardback edition. The story, along with Tuttle's illuminating introduction and clear explanatory notes, would be highly suitable as a teaching text if the book were available in a reasonably-priced paper edition.

This book shows how Gilman was truly thinking during her times of her youth to her death. She speaks in her own words which makes it great for researching for term papers. I used this book last Fall to research a paper I was doing for Art of Literature class at College. It helped me trememdously and I think it will help others who read it to learn or read it to do research of her life in a paper for school. It is definitley an A+ in my book of books on Gilman's life.

Todd McGowan has made a monumental contribution to our understanding of the canon controversies, and done it with an admirable and astonishing brevity and focus. The readings of particular authors, contextualized with respect to their moment of entry into the canon of literary studies (and with respect to a number of other interesting and provocative issues), are a model of what cultural studies can be, when undertaken by someone with an authentic concern for how literature functions vis-a-vis the social (symbolic) order . What should especially not be overlooked,in my opinion, is McGowan's immeasurable --and, again, marvellously condensed-- contribution to our understanding of the dilemma between essentialistic, rational, enlightenment-based notions of the self versus postmodern dissolution of the self into what are often celebrated by theorists (of all stripes) today under the banner of "multiple subject positions," or some related notion of "discursively-determined subjectivity" (see the last chapter for a terse tour-de-force critique of this dilemma). It must be stressed that McGowan's deployment of Lacanian concepts is not obscured by excessive jargon or mathematical abstractions. He not only wields such terminology with expertise, but makes psychoanalytic concepts intelligible and politically relevant. I highly recommend this excellent book.

Gilman was a woman who went through much pain and suffering this book tells of her life being taken away from her by her Psychiatrist whom she hated for the rest of her. She speaks of being put on the Rest Cure for Post-Pardom Depression and how the doctors told her not to have anymore children. She speaks of her 8 years being locked up in her own house and in an insane asylum and she tells how her doctor put her on a regamine for the rest of her life. She also speaks of how she was not able to write and generate what she loved most--writing; because her doctor told her not too. She speaks of her publication of her first short stories and "The Yellow Wallpaper" and many others of her stories. She also or the author also speaks of how Gilman commits suicide in the end. It gets really depressing, but you really see how Psychologists thought in the 19th century and how a great writer had to live her life.

A vintage whodunit, this book includes wry humour, a subtle feminist commentary regarding women in 1920's society & even a butler! The story is a thoroughly enjoyable diversion (particularly needed in recent weeks). An excellent choice for Charlotte Perkins Gilman fans & anyone who enjoys a good mystery.

Gilman shows the reader she is going with men in the workplace , but wants to show women are just as hard or harder workers at home than the men outside of the house. She wants to show how men think women are weaklings and she shows them wrong with her strong words against the put down of a man.

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