Victorian Era Mental Health Exhibit on Display Through July 21
Laupus Library is hosting the traveling exhibit “The Literature of Prescription: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and ‘The Yellow Wall-paper’” in the Evelyn Fike Laupus gallery on the fourth floor of the library.
On display through July 21, the six-banner exhibit explores a time during the late 19th century when women were challenging ideas about gender that excluded them from political and intellectual life. Consequently, medical and scientific experts drew on notions of female weakness to justify inequality between the sexes.
Discouraged from pursuing a career to preserve her health, artist and writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman rejected these ideas in a terrifying short story titled, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The famous tale served as an indictment of the medical profession and the social conventions restricting women’s professional and creative opportunities.
Artifacts from The Country Doctor Museum and books from Laupus Library’s history collections will also be on display and include: books by Dr. Weir Mitchell, Victorian era stimulants and tonics and 19th century birthing supplies.
The exhibit is available during the business hours posted here.
The exhibition was developed and produced by the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health. It was curated by Manon Parry.
For more information about the exhibit, visit the NLM website or contact Layne Carpenter at carpenterl15@ecu.edu or 252-744-3181.
Click here for directions and parking information.
If you’d like to travel by bus from Main Campus, take bus 302 from the Main Campus Student Center to the Allied Health Sciences Building. Click here for the 302 bus schedule.
To learn more about Victorian Era mental health care, you can visit our other exhibit on this topic Madness In America: Mental Health Care During the Victorian Era. This is display is located on the second floor and will be on display through July 31.