The Yellow WallPaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The surroundings which one is placed in can drastically contribute to their mental state. Deterioration and a lack of stimulation will be reciprocated within the mind of the inhabitant. “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892, depicts a young, unnamed woman who is suffering with post-partum depression. In this time period, the treatment of mental illness typically did more harm than good as electroshock therapy, and the rest cure were the classic treatments of choice. Similarly, William Faulkner, the author of “A Rose for Emily”, written in 1930, gives the reader an inside look upon an elderly woman experiencing mental distress. Although there are major signs of an issue being present within Miss Emily’s old, southern house, the town chooses to ignore and cover them up as to not disrupt the elderly woman who buys poisons without a reason and sleeps next to the dead corpse of her lover. Theme and setting play two very distinct and important roles within each of these stories allowing the reader to have a more complete understanding of the message the author is trying to convey.

The symbolism of multiple aspects of “The Yellow Wallpaper” help to make the reader understand the subordination of women and the heinousness of such subordination. Moonlight is the first symbolism one can see the prominence of. The moon has long been a symbol of the woman as with early

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;

The yellow wallpaper represents society. The gates you see her in front of the background image symbolize freedom. The lights illuminating right through the window represents the power of men. The woman behind the gates seeks escape the control of men. Also, as it becomes more complex, she begins to see women behind it which shows the problem is worse and she become more mentally unstable. “Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over ( Gilman 9).” women trailing behind the picture shows it feels confined to the walls of the room. The narrator breaks yellow wallpaper not willing to accept how bad is her mental state. ' 'I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk about the house ' '( Gilman ). This statement reveals the wishes of the narrator want to think independently. Here we can see how women of 19th century thought. women prefer not to think about their condition rather than fight his place in society.

Written in 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” tells the experience of a nervous woman named Jane who falls into psychosis during the “rest cure” treatment prescribed by her husband John. The rest cure admits the patient to bed rest with limited activity for the body and mind allowed; Dr. S. Weir Mitchell advocated the rest cure and is mentioned by name in the short story by Gilman who had him as her doctor (Gilman 80). During Jane’s rest cure, she is banned from creative work like writing her thoughts but finds “great relief from writing on dead paper”, even if it includes hiding her banned writings from being discovered. The one main complaint Jane has in her writings is the yellow wallpaper that surrounds the room without pattern or end and slowly grows more bothersome to Jane during her rest cure. Jane describes how the colors remind her of disgusting yellow things, how even the wallpaper smells up the rental house, and shakes by a woman within the wallpaper (Gilman 85-86). With nothing to occupy Jane’s mind the wallpaper becomes an obsession that torments her anxiety and consumes her sanity towards the end of her rest cure. Gilman experiences the same madness from her rest cure treatment as Jane in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The horrid treatment of “rest cure” from doctor Silas Weir Mitchell led author Charlotte Perkins Gilman into writing “The Yellow Wallpaper,” sharing her experience of madness resulting from her treatment to represent the

As the protagonist suffers from her “nervous condition”, the isolated environment causes her to only get worse. Being trapped in the bedroom with yellow wallpaper contributes her emotional distress to become overpowering. The inability to verbally express her feelings of loneliness causes her to write in a more creative way about her relationships with objects in the room, specifically the yellow wallpaper. She begins to write about the yellow wallpaper as if it is suppose to have some sort of significance, in which it does. In the beginning of the narrator’s isolation, her attention is focused on the details of the yellow wallpaper’s pattern that are “dull enough to confused the eye in following, pronounced enough constantly to irritate and provoke study” (438). The wallpaper’s characteristics become hard to

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

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story of, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” seems to be about a woman suffering from postpartum depression at first glance, but as the reader looks deeper into the text, can notice that this only scratches the surface. The protagonist, confined to a small room with yellow wallpaper under her husband’s direction, starts to go a bit mad. Her projection of her shadow grows into an imaginary woman that embodies the conflicts she experiences throughout the story, leading her to become more and more unstable and break down the boundaries of her and her shadow’s identity.

The terms “social status” and “influence” are two that go hand in hand. When one is given a high ranking on the social ladder, they are also given influence, a powerful tool that can be used for good, but also as a weapon if mishandled (which it often is). Many things in society make up social status and can also be found to have a direct relationship with influence, including wealth, sex, age, profession, education, and even race. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, this correlation and abuse of influence is portrayed through an inside look into the deteriorating mind of a woman whose life is being controlled by her influential, high in social status husband. Although he believes that he is doing the

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story, The Yellow Wallpaper represents an early utilisation of a mentally unstable unreliable narrator. Gilman’s narrator is, in fact, so unreliable that her name is the subject of critical discussion over a century after the story’s initial publication. Whilst the descent of Gilman’s narrator into madness has been the subject of various conflicting literary interpretations it is certain that Gilman’s own experiences of mental health problems and subsequent inadequate attempts at treatment provided the mainstay of her inspiration for the novel. In her autobiography Gilman stated that "the real purpose of the story was to reach Dr. S. Weir Mitchell [her doctor], and convince him of the error of his ways’. Gilman’s use of such a forwardly unreliable narrator was not ground-breaking, the technique has been utilised by authors from Chaucer to Sterne. Yet Gilman’s choice utilisation in order to explore both her own condition and broader societal attitudes towards the management of the mentally-ill was unprecedented. Some seventy years later, as critics began to flesh out formal approaches to unreliable narrators against the backdrop of emergent war-scarred and drug-enveloped countercultures the scene was set for further similar explorations of mental health through Gilman’s established means.

Many pieces of literature are written to convey a specific meaning, or to bring light to certain issues in real life. The short story titled “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written in 1892 about a woman named Jane who is diagnosed with depression and given a treatment named the “rest cure.” Charlotte Perkins Gilman created this story based on her experiences with the “rest cure” and sent it to the creator of the treatment, S. Weir Mitchell, for criticism (Gilman 419). When read, this short story is usually seen through a feminist critical lense, but it can be taken more in depth if the reader is to assume a psychological lense. The adversity in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s life generated her depression and inspired the story, which then changed the way mental illnesses were viewed and treated in the future.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” By Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story about a woman 's slow spiral to insanity as she is forced into a mundane, repressive lifestyle by her husband and Doctor. Throughout history inequality has been a prominent political and social issue. Inequality is seen in many aspects of society, such as class, race, and gender. Gender inequality is an issue that has been relevant throughout our history yet only become a true fight near the start of the 20th century. Men and women are forced to play different roles in society. Men are generally seen as the leader of the family, the job holder, and the usual recipients of social and political respect, while women are seen as the home make with the menial roles. Men were respected and seen as superior to women. The fight for gender equality has challenged these traditional roles, women 's place in society has changed since then, but not without a little help. Influential writers, such as Charlotte perkins Gilman 's have helped pave the way for equal rights through their powerful literature. In this story, we see how mistreated women are and the psychological effect that a patriarchal society can have. Gilman explores the female condition during the late 19th century through symbolic and profound literary themes that relate to the treatment of women.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a prominent feminist, social thinker, wife, mother, and author who wrote with liveliness using a direct, straightforward approach. She has written over two hundred pieces of fiction, mainly in short stories, in periodicals, and in her own Forerunner magazine (Butterworth). Gilman’s own experiences of being trapped in a marriage, suffering postpartum depression, and experiencing the rest cure prescribed by her physician Silas Weir Mitchell at his Philadelphia sanatorium, caused her to have a mental breakdown thus inspiring her famous short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” in 1892 (Hudock). “The Yellow Wallpaper” is written in the first person voice, reporting the narrator’s thinking, feelings, and perception during this time. The story is admired as a tale of horror and madness in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe and is considered by critics her only genuinely literary piece of work she wrote (Butterworth).

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