Written For a Purpose

In Gilman's On the Reception of the Yellow Wallpaper, I wondered at the last line: " In my judgement it is a pretty poor thing to write, to talk, without a purpose." Is the "purpose" for Gilman necessarily political? Is she attempting to make a general statement about or even critique of other writers misusing their craft? We discussed in class other reasons writers have articulated for doing what they do, many quite romantically and movingly, but there's something smart and buried in Gilman's thought here that I can't put my finger on. In Yellow Wallpaper, as in Stowe's Uncle Tom, the text functions as rhetoric We know that The Yellow Wallpaper, like many other works by women authors we've read in this class ask us to sympathize with the minority in society, someone who is disaffected or misunderstood because of gender, race, class, or disability.