Scholars don't usually get to direct plays and write scripts. Working with the Public Media Foundation as consulting scholar on the production of Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" didn't turn me to a new career, but it was great fun. I loved seeing how playwright Laura Harrington took a story told in the first person, a story whose very fibre depends upon the mental deterioration of the woman who tells the story, and opened it up into a dialogue. Having a conversation between John, the physician husband, and S. Weir Mitchell, inventor of the rest cure, seemed ingenious to me. Then there were the sound effects--a baby crying, a clock chiming, a door opening--that evoked setting and conveyed information so efficiently. Like a translation of a poem, the radio play takes on a life of its own, with internal rules of art that must be followed. At the same time, of course, one must be true to the original story. It was a great experience to be a part of this creative process and to know that we were making available in a new form this classic story of social and psychological repression.

Joan D. Hedrick is Charles A. Dana Professor of History, Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. Her biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe, (published in 1994) received a Pulitzer Prize. Professor Hedrick is a member of the Scribbling Women Advisory Committee and was consultant scholar for the dramatization of "The Yellow Wallpaper".

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