' The Yellow Wallpaper, By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“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 “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator, already suffering with Post-Partum Depression, is further constrained when her husband John prescribes her resting treatment for her illness. John clarifies that she must lie in bed in the same, enclosed room, refrain from using her imagination and especially abstain from writing. This, in turn, forces the narrator deeper into her

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

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.

The short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman brings a closer look at one woman’s psychological health. Gilman’s story influenced women’s mistreatment in the late nineteenth century in the American society. Rena Korb is a writer and editor says, “’The Yellow Wallpaper’ commands attention not only for the harrowing journey into madness it portrays, but also for its realism” ("The Yellow Wallpaper" 284). In the story "The Yellow Wallpaper," a woman falls into postpartum depression, and the doctor has recommended treatment of the “rest cure” that contributes to her madness.

In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman creates a narrator who rents out a mansion in the summer with her husband. The main reason for their summer retreat is because the narrator is “ill” and suffering from what her husband calls “a slight hysterical tendency.” The narrator’s husband places her in a big airy sunlit room with hideous yellow wallpaper asserting she be confined to bed rest. As time goes by, the woman becomes infatuated with the yellow wallpaper claiming that there’s a woman enclosed in the pattern. I’m arguing that the wallpaper plays a role in symbolism. In my opinion, it represents how the narrator suffers from the oppression of her husband and the feeling of being trapped.

Stuffed animals may help to console a fussy child into a soothing sleep, while an inspiring story told by a veteran grandparent may encourage a timid student enough to successfully complete a classroom speech. Personal possessions, whether tangible or not, can have the profound effect on the owner of helping him or her to cope with uncontrollable life events. The short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman depicts the tumultuous life of narrating character, referred to as Jane, whose attempts to hold onto things around her to prevent her declining mental state. The story is set in the late 1800’s, subjecting Jane and her husband, John, to the misconception of roles as women to be subordinate and men to dominate adds to the burden of ignorance over women’s health and welfare. Furthermore, Jane clings to her sparse possessions as desperate attempts to gain control over herself, while John holds onto items which support his pursuits of exerting control over others.

Freedom and individuality is vital in any one person’s happiness. One cannot truly be happy if one’s life is governed by a dictatorship and is unable to live as one pleases. When one’s opinions, emotions, and individuality are suppressed to fit a mold other than their own, one will suffer. The narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” suffers from these forms of oppression and is driven mad as the result of her subdued mind. The narrator’s physical and mental oppression further accelerates her slight nervousness into a crippling insanity.

But there are multiple meanings and messages that were conveyed in the story, thoroughly. It is about an unnamed woman confined by her doctor-husband to an attic nursery barred with windows and a bolted-down bed. (The doctor-husband John, an American physician and has been helping the main character cure her anxiety and depression, so he puts her in an empty old house, to keep her safe (or keep her out) of society. She then was locked up in a room decorated with yellow wallpaper; John locked her up hidden in an empty, airy room during the day to keep her away from her newborn child and away from society. The wife has alienated herself by hating the wallpaper at first but achieves to pass time by looking, whilst admiring the yellow wallpaper that she had once despised of. As of the characters, John is perceived as a loving, caring and a dominating husband, although he is portrayed as a good

Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's career as a leading feminists and social activist translated into her writing as did her personal life. Gilman 's treatment for her severe depression and feelings of confinement in her marriage were paralleled by the narrator in her shorty story, "The Yellow Wallpaper".

The short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Gilman, presents as a feminist text written in protest to the treatment of women by a male dominated society. The story is told from the narrator’s perspective, a woman who’s name we never learn. A woman suffering from post-natal-depression who is prescribed the remedy of the day, a course of treatment known as “rest cure”, in which the sufferer is confined to bed and not allowed to partake in the activities of daily life. This extended period of isolation and activity deprivation drives the narrator further into a depression, and later into insanity as she tries to cope with the isolation. In the story, the patriarchy of society is blamed in part for the narrator’s mental

“ [I] came perilously near to losing my mind. The mental agony grew so unbearable that I would sit blankly moving my head from side to side”, Charlotte Gilman writes after a month of following the “rest cure”. The rest cure is summed up by not forcing women to nothing. Men in the nineteenth century dominated women, treating them like children, causing them to go insane. Jane and her husband, John, move into a mansion for Jane to get some “air”, yet she ends up feeling trapped and going crazy. Gilman deals with a very real issue from the nineteenth century through the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper.

Neurasthenia was first described in 1869 as a disease characterized by extreme anxiety, depression, and fatigue. But in the 18th and 19th century, a temporary nervous depression, which is what the narrator in “The Yellow Paper” is diagnosed with, was the illness most common among women due to their perceived fragility and weak emotions. This nervous disease was associated with numerous symptoms, such as pale urine, a visible swelling of the stomach, headaches, fainting, palpitations of the heart, wind in the stomach and intestines, frequent sighing, giddiness, convulsive crying, convulsive laughing, despair, and melancholy (T. Wayne, C. Vincent). In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator, a woman who has recently given birth, has been diagnosed with neurasthenia, and imprisoned in a summer home as a result of the times period’s patriarchal and industrial society.

Many aspects of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” mirrors the author’s own struggles. It is because of her real life experience with depression and struggle with self-identity that Gilman is able to transport the reader into the innermost thoughts of the narrator. Gilman understands her character in a way only a true sister-sufferer can. In fact, the purpose of “The Yellow Wallpaper” according the Gilman is to “save others from being driven crazy,” (52). She could not have accomplished this masterpiece without drawing from her own experiences. These parallels include similarities in the life of Gilman and her heroine, oppression by societal mindset, first-hand experience of the Mitchell Rest Cure and culminates with self-healing.