Charlotte Gilman 's The Yellow Wallpaper

The story "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a story about control. In the late 1800's, women were looked upon as having no effect on society other than bearing children and keeping house. It was difficult for women to express themselves in a world dominated by males. The men held the jobs, the men held the knowledge, the men held the key to the lock known as society . . . or so they thought. The narrator in "The Wallpaper" is under this kind of control from her husband, John. Although most readers believe this story is about a woman who goes insane, it is actually about a woman’s quest for control of her life.

The yellow wallpaper is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman that takes place in the mid-1900s. This literary work shows how one person’s depression can turn into complete psychosis. My initial response to Charlotte’s story was one of confusion. As I reread the piece given the title “The Yellow Wallpaper”, I realized that the author Gilman uses the description and symbolism of the wallpaper to show how depression can spiral into complete madness. It gives an interesting insight into the mind of a mentally unstable person. But what caused her to reach into the mental unstable corners of her mind?

“The Yellow-Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman published in 1892, gives the reading an insight to a woman who is going insane throughout the story. The story starts off with her Jane having a child, and suffering from depression. Reading the story gave me an insight into how women were treated in the 19th century. Women, in that era, were told only to be wife and mother. They weren't allowed to write or express themselves as the men could. The wife of John, named Jane was not allowed to show her intelligence or creativity. “The Yellow-Wallpaper” clearly illustrates how tough Jane’s and women of the 19th century lives were. In the story Jane was being treated badly by her husband John, but at the end of the story Jane is victorious because she manages to escape her marriage and claims her independence from John.

In The Yellow Wallpaper the main character is remanded to rest, so she can ‘recover’ from her “temporary nervous depression” (Gilman 25), which can be attributed to her postpartum depression after the birth of her child. The early appearance of the disease in the narrative shows how much of a prevailing theme it is for women living in the late Victorian era, as this was written in 1892. The narrator has been diagnosed with a “slight hysterical tendency” and prescribed confinement to her room by her husband, a doctor. This ‘hysterical tendency’ is referring to the depression she is going through but is mainly diagnosed because of her refusal/inability to care for her child, the staple of womanhood. She notes “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression-a slight

The way how a patriarchal society sees women is, one of the biggest ideas that are being expressed in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s narration criticizes the social structure that she lives in, gender roles, the rest cure and how women were considered inferior to men, during the 19th-century, with a feminist approach. The author uses symbolism throughout the story to show the social differences between a married male and a female. It is evident that the narrator mostly does not agree with John, but in the end has no choice but to tell him that she agrees.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman, is a feminist short story. It is about a woman who is mentally ill and gets misdiagnosed by her controlling husband. He puts her in a room saying doing nothing will cure her. While in the room she becomes captivated by the yellow wallpaper. She start to see a trapped woman in the wallpaper.

The Yellow Wallpaper is a story about a woman with mental illness that only gets worse as time goes on written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The narrator’s husband, who is also her doctor, tries to help her but what he does only hinders her. This story is narrated by the mentally unstable wife, trapped in her home. She starts off by writing journals, even though her husband tells her not too. In The Yellow Wallpaper she becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper in their bedroom. The theme of The Yellow Wallpaper is obsession and depression.

It makes sense to interpret that way because it was not until the early 1970’s that Gilman’s short story gained traction to become one of the world’s most important pieces about feminism

Madness is what essentially haunts humans. Whether they are born with it or it is brought upon, it leaves a blurred rush of lunacy in its habitants minds. Competently so, a handful of these beings can write and express these tangled minds into compositions that leave the reader cognized and fascinated. Respectably, an author that always seems to come along any viewer’s mind is Charlotte Perkins Gilman, known especially for her controversial short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. The piece deals with a woman who is on a forced vacation from her conventional role as a wife and a mother, diagnosed and treated by her doctor as well as her husband for a slight case of depression. Her primary “treatment” for this is predominantly a week-long stay in an ugly, yellow wallpaper-covered secluded room where she sits and “rests” mostly alone for an extended period of time. In the story, Gilman confronts ideas of isolation from her main character’s world, drawing out attributes from wallpaper and its designs to represent the escape from the society in which she lives in. Alike, she also ties the ideas of loneliness into this character’s stream-of-consciousness by discussing her situation in a passive mindset. Moreover, by using different symbols and stream-of-consciousness, Charlotte Perkins Gilman illustrates the deterioration of a female’s mental health when forced into isolation in her short story, The Yellow Wallpaper.

I thought that “The Yellow Wallpaper” was a great piece because of its meaning and message. The messages that Charlotte Perkin Gilman portrays in the story are very powerful and, given the biographical background, are clearly derived from her own experiences as a woman during the 19th century. I felt empathy for the main character as her depression worsened and her mental state progressively declined. I felt like the main character felt very isolated and unheard. No one seemed to be able to understand her issues or could relate to the way she was feeling. Only in her journal could she express the feeling of oppression and loneliness that she had. I feel as though if her husband were to read her journal that he might also empathize with his

Numerous interpretations have been constructed on what the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” actually intends to portray to the reader; it has been analyzed by many scholars over the years. It was written in the nineteenth-century by Charlotte Perkins Gilman who was known to write about the dangers that existed with fixed gender roles along with the patriarchal model which ensured power for men. The males were to maintain the public sphere outside of the home, providing for the family and the women were to remain inside of the home keeping the domestic sphere. Notably, women portrayed the submissive role beneath the male-dominated society. The husband “John” is a doctor that takes his wife “the narrator” to a rental home to rehabilitate from her

The Yellow Wallpaper is a story about women’s repression in the 19th century. This story shows an immense difference between men and women inside society. While the men are the one making the decisions and taking responsibility, women must accept their obligations. The protagonist is repressed and appear for the effect of the oppression of women in society. This effect is develop by the use of complex symbols such as, the room, the wallpaper, the window which facilitates her oppression as well as her self-expression. Charlotte Gilman writes from her own personal experiences and emanates a strong message about how males dominated society. Gilman uses her personal bout to with postpartum depression to generate a powerful fictional narrative which has broad implications for women. Women were considered weaker than men, which meant they had to adapt to the domestic sphere. Gilman wrote many other books about feminism, one of them is “Herland” which is about the assumptions of women’s roles in society. Gilman states that the meaning of her story extends beyond an isolated, individual situation. Women were treated as second class citizens. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the wallpaper symbolizes the narrator’s growing repression.

When asked to describe the role of a woman in society, many would use words such as caretaker, mother, wife; however, none of these words imply that the woman is an independent entity from her familial duties. This stifled role begins a feminist movement which employs many avenues to call for change in the hopes of achieving gender equality for all women. One prominent writer, Charlotte Gilman, penned an exceptionally powerful short-story she titled, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" as her contribution to this cause. In an era which depicted women in the shadows of men, Gilman yearned to bring the social injustice of women to the forefront of conversation. Moreover, Gilman used her personal experiences of emotional, moral and intellectual conflict to

“Aesthetically disorganized and confusing, its frenzied design representing a break from the straightforward, instructional acclimated patterns”: the trademarks of yellow journalism (*****). The increasingly dominating war for customers between newspapers employed sensational writing, consisting of inaccurate journalism, printed on cheap yellow paper, coining the term ‘Yellow Journalism’ in 1896. Although yellow journalism not yet proper terminology during Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s publishing of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, sensational writing was present during the story’s publication. Gilman was a literary author who opposed the increase of the sensational press that threatened her position as an author in its frequent personal attacks on her and its refusal to print non-sensational or serious writing. Similarly Gilman’s classic short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” recounts the plight of a woman

During the 1930’s through the 1960’s, women’s voice would go unheard, and were not as important as men’s opinions. Throughout that, time men were more dominant in literature and other type of works. Many men would write about women’s feeling and perspective but would not have an accurate understand of women’s way of thinking. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was one woman in particular that clarified what women truly felt. Gilman is primarily known for one remarkable story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” this short work of fiction, deals with an unequal marriage and a women being destroyed by her unfulfilled desire for self-expression, in the story Gilman express a part of her life story but in another women perspective showing what was it that she felt and