How to read color: writing, wallpaper, and the case of Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Abstract

How does color, especially historical color, become inscribed in literature? What relation holds between the materiality of color at any given historical moment and the concurrent literary representations of color experience? This article proposes, first, that in historicizing literary color we should consider theories of color psychology alongside technologies of color production. It then uses the discourse of color in late nineteenth-century design theory, which focused precisely on the relation between chromatic arrangements and their mental effects, to show how historical ideas about color informed the writing of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, particularly her depictions of color experience, but also her larger approaches to narrative. The article concludes by arguing that the model of color popularized in home decoration—one in which colors produce potent yet unnoticed psychological effects—illuminates the relation between Gilman’s fiction and her broader efforts at social reform.