Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses her short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” to show how women undergo oppression by gender roles. Gilman does so by taking the reader through the terrors of one woman’s changes in mental state. The narrator in this story becomes so oppressed by her husband that she actually goes insane. The act of oppression is very obvious within the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and shows how it changes one’s life forever.

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892, is a great example of early works pertaining to feminism and the disease of insanity. Charlotte Gilman’s own struggles as a woman, mother, and wife shine through in this short story capturing the haunting realism of a mental breakdown.The main character, much like Gilman herself, slips into bouts of depression after the birth of her child and is prescribed a ‘rest cure’ to relieve the young woman of her suffering. Any use of the mind or source of stimulus is strictly prohibited, including the narrator’s favorite hobby of writing. The woman’s husband, a physician, installs into his wife that the rest treatment is correct and will only due harm if not followed through. This type of treatment ultimately drives the woman insane, causing her to envision a woman crawling behind the yellow wallpaper of her room. Powerlessness and repression the main character is subject to creates an even more poignant message through the narrator’s mental breakdown. The ever present theme of subordination of women in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is advanced throughout the story by the literary devices of symbolism, imagery, and allegory.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, The Yellow Wallpaper, the setting is very symbolic when analyzing the different the meanings of this book. The main character in the story is sick with nervous depression. In the story, John, her husband, and also a physician, takes his wife to a house in the middle of the summer and confines her to one room in hopes of perfect rest for her. As the story progresses, it is made clear that confinement, sanity, insanity, and freedom are all tied together and used to make the setting of the story symbolic.

In the 1950’s, women weren’t respected for doing anything besides being an outstanding wife and mother. Women and men weren’t on the same level when it came to rights in the eyes of the law. Also during this time, mental illnesses were not accurately researched, and since doctors weren’t fully aware of all the information about mental illnesses, patients did not always get the best treatment and were treated as freaks. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, both of these elements are present. Gilman did a wonderful job portraying how women are not taken seriously and how lightly mental illnesses are taken. Gilman had, too, had firsthand experience with the physician in the story. Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's believes that there really was no difference in means of way of thinking between men or women is strongly. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story about a woman who has a mental illness but cannot heal due to her husband 's lack of belief. The story appears to happen during a time period where women were mistreated. Women were treated as second rate people in community during this time period. Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows the thought process of the community during the time period in which “The Yellow Wallpaper” is written. Using knowledge on equal rights between women and men, one can carefully study “The Yellow Wallpaper” by

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in 1860, in the city of Hartford, CT. She would later move to California. She would end her own life in 1935, after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She fought for women’s rights and was an advocate of socialism. She wrote novels, poetry and short stories. She was a woman who was educated; her writing reflected her knowledge, relating to her strong thoughts on woman’s rights and independence and how women of Victorian times suffered from this lack of rights. In her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman conveys her views on feminism and how women are treated through characters who represent this treatment. The characters she uses help the reader really get drawn into her story;

period of inactivity thought to cure hysteria and nervous conditions in women. The story appears

An anonymous author once said, “What consumes your mind, controls your life.” In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator is suffering from severe depression, at the very least and constantly tries to get better. While trying to get better she becomes increasingly fixated on the yellow wallpaper that encompasses her in her room. It gets to the point where the wallpaper is all she thinks about and slowly, it starts to control her life. The yellow wallpaper in this story is a representation of the narrator’s relationship with her disease.

The constant act of avoiding the worth women have in society spirals down to the core fact how women are envisioned inferior to men. In The Ways We Lie by Stephanie Ericsson, the simple declaration, “We lie. We all do. We exaggerate, we minimize, we avoid confrontation, we spare people’s feelings, we conveniently forget, we keep secrets, we justify lying to the big-guy’s institutions.” Depicts how far lies have come to fit in the spectrum of society, which has inevitably caused women to lose their voice in established lies – mistaken as truths – into thinking that the unfair treatment they receive is what they deserve.

“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.

treats her like a child and just like a child she is kept in this

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s brilliant work, The Yellow Wallpaper, readers explore the consequences of the ignorance of mental health, as well the underlying story of Gilman’s suffering to mental health in nineteenth century America. In this psychological tale we are introduced to a woman facing a mental illness in the late 1800’s writing secretly about being belittled about her health by her husband, John, a doctor, who subjects her to bed rest and isolation to the real world to recover. As she loses touch with life outside of the house, she begins to obsess with the women she sees behind the yellow wallpaper of her bedroom. I believe the author 's true intent of the story is not to be simply thrown away as a psychological thriller, but also to comment the lack of recognition Medicine heldhold on the patients’ opinions, especially women.

It seems as though our best writings are formed from personal experiences. Weather happy or sad, our emotions we feel, are the driving force of our actions that leads to our most intimate events from the heart. However, this can enlighten all, on a story that is filled with the upmost sincerity for its depiction of a mental debacle of one woman at the hands of her physician, her husband. The short story of The Yellow Wallpaper is a story of a woman who undergoes an illness and inevitably finds peace utterly in taking full part of her insanity. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author, did not have a loving and caring life growing up. Her perseverance through thick and thin helped in her growing, through it all it has made her stronger and without a doubt the writer she has grown to be. Charlotte Perkins Gilman is well known for her short story The Yellow Wallpaper, but also for her deep work in the feminist movement. Through her experiences in life and her own characteristics, they are seen incarnated in the character Jane our hero of the story.

Bars on windows, locks on doors, no communication with the outside world. Does this sound like a good treatment and conditions for someone who has a mental illness? In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, we follow a woman through her journey with the rest cure. The narrator of the story is prescribed the rest cure after having a “slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 648). She is sent up to live in the attic of the home that she and her husband are renting for several months. The attic has bars over all the windows and rings on the walls. It sounds as though it is more like a room in an insane asylum than in the attic of a home, and definitely not a favorable place to shove someone that is trying to be treated for a mental disorder.

During the mid-1800’s women were often treated horribly and prohibited to have a mind of their own. Charlotte Perkins Gilman the author of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper” does an exquisite job illustrating the mentality society during this time in the short story. Gillman’s notion often was that men and women did not have a different mindset. ‘’ The Yellow Wallpaper” is a tale about this women who is mentally unstable and cannot recover due to her husband’s disbelief. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman uses feminist criticism through the dialogue, symbolism hidden in the text, and the protagonist transformation to help the readers understand the male and female dynamics of that time period.

with a rest cure. The doctor in the story is much like the doctor that