More on Work

Apropos last week's post on Americans' enjoyment of work:

In 1899, Charlotte Perkins Gilman published "The Yellow Wallpaper," a story in which a young woman diagnosed with neurasthenia takes the rest cure . . . and slowly goes mad as a result.

The story created a shocked sensation, and in 1913 Gilman published "Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper" to explain the genesis of her story, which was her own struggle with the rest cure.

In it, she says,

. . . using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist's advice to the winds and went to work again--work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service, without which one is a pauper and a parasite--ultimately recovering some measure of power.