Resumé af 'The Yellow Wallpaper' og 'The Price of My Soul'

The yellow wallpaperIt might sound like a title of a crime detective novel, but it is Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s description of the failure of her first marriage. Her own parents’ divorce wasn’t without meaning, just like her own mother’s lack of love had affected her deeply. Shortly after she had given birth to her daughter, she experienced two years of mental illness. She describes the course of this disease in “the yellow wallpaper”. The main character of the novel tries to free some women, whom she sees behind the wallpaper of her bedroom. The wallpaper’s pattern is the bars of the prison windows. The writer’s situation was the same as the women’s. She herself was a prisoner behind the walls of her own house. Her husband and the family’s doctor even forbid close friends’ visits.

The price of my soul

Bernadette Devils autobiography is called the price of my soul. The title of the book was her mother's idea for the autobiography she never got to write herself. The mother died several years before her daughter's political work began. The family's poverty and England's supremacy in Northern Ireland made Bernadette go into politics. The votes of the Catholic section of the population sent her to the parliament in London. She was the youngest member of the House of Commons, and therefore she became the journalists' favourite target. She gradually lost her illusions because of the others member of the parliaments' opinion, but the autobiography's message is that her ideals are not for sale.