Melnick Medical Museum hosting exhibit on Gilman

Staff report

youngstown

The Melnick Medical Museum at Youngstown State University is hosting a new banner exhibit from the National Library of Medicine called “Literature of Prescription: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper.’”

The exhibit in the atrium/cafe of Cushwa Hall on the YSU campus will be on display through Aug. 8.

The exhibit is sponsored by the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health.

According to the NIH website: “In the late 19th century, at a time when women were challenging traditional ideas about gender that excluded them from political and intellectual life, medical and scientific experts drew on notions of female weakness to justify inequality between the sexes.

“Artist and writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who was discouraged from pursuing a career to preserve her health, rejected these ideas in a terrifying short story titled ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper.’ The famous tale served as an indictment of the medical profession and the social conventions restricting women’s professional and creative opportunities.”