SOURCE: Beer, Janet. “‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ on Film: Dramatising Mental Illness.” In Kate Chopin, Edith Wharton and Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Studies in Short Fiction, pp. 197-213. London: MacMillan, 1997.

In the following essay, Beer discusses the 1992 motion picture adaptation of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” produced by the British Broadcasting Corporation.

In 1988 a ninety-minute adaptation of “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was made for BBC television; filming took place in the autumn of that year and it was ready for broadcasting in January 1989 although it was not actually shown until January 1992. The project had been initiated by the producer, Sarah Curtis, who invited the dramatist, Maggie Wadey, to write the screenplay.¹ Whilst the adaptation was almost entirely the work of Maggie Wadey a number of decisions about the way in which the text would be approached and also how to shoot and edit the film were made collaboratively between...