Unique Elements Historical context - Detailed 20th century analysis About The Yellow Wallpaper & Herland A collection of two unmissable literary classics by American feminist writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Yellow Wallpaper relates the deterioration of a woman's mental health while on a ‘rest cure’ in a rented summer house with her family. Her obsession with the yellow wallpaper in her bedroom marks her descent into psychosis following a struggle with postpartum depression. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature for its illustration of the attitudes towards mental and physical health of women in the 19th century. Herland is a utopian novel also written by Gilman, and published posthumously. On the eve of World War I, an isolated all-female society is discovered somewhere in the distant reaches of the earth by three male explorers. The men are forced to re-examine their assumptions about women’s roles in society when they observe an ideal social order: free of war, conflict, and domination.