Pioneering Women

Up at some weird hour, unable to sleep, I just re-read a short story I used to teach in A.P. English: The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She was a prominent poet, writer, lecturer and social reformer during the early 1900's -- known for her pioneering writing about postpartum depression and female mental health. (No, I'm not related to her.)

http://www.womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/gilman1.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Perkins_Gilman

I know how much we are still learning about the female psyche and, in a day when Hollywood stars like Brooke Shields get so much press for their "work" in this field, I just thought I'd try giving a little credit to those women who risked severe social criticism and alienation to speak out when it just wan't acceptable to do so. If you've already read it, then pass it along to your sister, mother or girlfriend. It's an eye-opening, first-hand account of what women used to suffer -- alone.

The Yellow Wall-paper (short story text):
http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=GilYell.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1
Gilman, on why she wrote the story:
http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/whyyw.html

Scholarly commentary:

http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/gilman.htm

Old School Research

Having worked on two Masters Degrees (one before the globalization of the internet, and one after), I couldn't help but salivate as I browsed through this powerful digitized library that doesn't require matriculation for access. How nice of BYU to share so much with so many, free of charge. I can't believe all the manuscripts, photographs, publications, and full-text documents avaliable to the public. You should take a peek:

http://www.lib.byu.edu/online.html

My dear friend Breena (the youngest Ph.D candidate I know) gets the credit for the find, and I can't help but wonder where in the world was this digital library during my curriculum development Masters and teaching A.P. English in the late 90's? When I think about the hours I spent visiting multiple libraries, hunting down archived private collections of pre-civil war slave narratives, and Victorian women's postpartum journals... sheesh!

Question: Why couldn't Mr. Al Gore have "invented" the internet before my time as a zoobie? But then again, one can not truly appreciate the power of the information superhighway until one has experienced the research-writing fun of spending hours and hours searching old card catalogues, LAN databases, and microfiche film. Does anyone else remember carrying around about $10 in nickels for the photocopier/microfiche, and a floppy for saving your hours of work?