Hi Everyone!
I don't read many short stories but as I mentioned in my 1900-1950 readathon post I recently bought a collection called Women Who Did. Lucy Powrie mentioned it a while go in a vlog where she read The Yellow Drawing Room and The Yellow Wallpaper. I was really excited to read The Yellow Drawing room and it was only ten pages long but I think I will still be able to fill up a whole blog post about it!
The whole collection of short stories is around the topic of the new woman. These were women who did things they previously were not supposed to such as ride bicycles, talk about politics and paint their drawing rooms yellow! But emerging in the late 19th and early 20th century was this new woman who did all of the above and this is perfectly captured in short stories of the time. Short stories also became popular around this era as women wanted to find a way to raise the subject in a new form. So they experimented with short stories and grew out of happy ever after romances, all of which is explored in the introduction to this book.
The actual story is written from the perspective of a stereotypical Victorian man who meets Vanora Haydon who has just painted her drawing room yellow. He is very confused and prejudiced against her. He thinks she is beautiful and she doesn't want to hear it.
She is a wonderful character with a mind of her own and I love her! I really enjoyed this and it was really interesting to read the introduction as well which gave lots of thoughts on the opinions of men at the time of these new women. It is also interesting to think about the significance of the colour yellow and what it is about that colour that is so shocking to men in that era. Soon I will read The Yellow Wallpaper which will also hopefully give me some food for thought on this topic.
I'll be back soon with another blog post!
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