The Yellow Wallpaper, By Charlotte Perkins Gilman Essay

    "The Yellow Wallpaper" takes a close look at one woman's mental deterioration. The narrator is emotionally isolated from her husband. Due to the lack of interaction with other people the woman befriends the reader by secretively communicating her story in a diary format. Her attitude towards the wallpaper is openly hostile at the beginning, but ends with an intimate and liberating connection. During the gradual change in the relationship between the narrator and the wallpaper, the yellow paper becomes a mirror, reflecting the process the woman is going through in her room.

The woman behind this work of literature portrays the role of women in the society during that period of time. "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a well written story describing a woman who suffers from insanity and how she struggles to express her own thoughts and feelings. The author uses her own experience to criticize male domination of women during the nineteenth century. Although the story was written fifty years ago, "The Yellow Wallpaper" still brings a clear message how powerless women were during that time.

The essay, "Why I wrote the Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was written primarily for the purpose of explaining the meaning and reasoning behind her semi-autobiographical short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper". Before stating these reasons, Gilman explains that she had been suffering from a "severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia--and beyond" (Gilman, 1913). After three years of this torment, she decided to go see a specialist in nervous diseases. The doctor she went to was named Dr. S. Weir Mitchell. Dr. Mitchell advised Gilman to be put to bed and to apply the rest cure, along with living a domestic life with limited amount of intellectual interaction and to never "touch pen, brush, or pencil again" (Gilman, 1913). As intimidating as this sounded, Gilman took the advise of her doctor, and followed his every suggestion for about three months. She had reached a point of almost complete mental ruin at the end of these three months, that she had to cast aside the specialist's advice. Instead of following his instructions, she began to work again. Ultimately, this is when and where "The Yellow Wallpaper" was written.

This gothic horror tale of nineteenth century fiction, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892; during a time that women writers were starting to come out and write about key issues in their treatment. She craftily sets up or spins the story with a setting of isolation and a character who feels trapped, by a husband who chooses not to know her; yet does not listen to her and keeps her trapped on an island, all in her best interest. The tone is filled with desperation, sarcasm, anger, and shows that though she is mentally unstable there is intelligence behind her instability that is kept unseen. The main symbol is the wallpaper which is a constant bane to her.

A review of the house itself suggests that an architectural hierarchy of privacy increases level by level. At first, the house seems to foster romantic sensibilities; intrigued by its architectural connotations, the narrator embarks upon its description immediately--it is the house that she wants to "talk about" (Gilman 11). Together with its landscape, the house is a "most beautiful place" that stands "quite alone . . . well back from the road, quite three miles from the village" (Gilman 11). The estate's grounds, moreover, consist of "hedges and walls and gates that lock" (Gilman 11). As such, the house and its grounds are markedly depicted as mechanisms of confinement--ancestral places situated within a legacy of control and

In "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the protagonist symbolizes the effect of the oppression of women in society in the Nineteenth Century. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the author reveals the narrator is torn between hate and love, but emotion is difficult to determine. The effects are produced by the use of complex themes used in the story, which assisted her oppression and reflected on her self-expression.

Clinical psychologist and writer, Kay Redfield Jamison once said, “I think one thing is that anybody who 's had to contend with mental illness - whether it 's depression, bipolar illness or severe anxiety, whatever - actually has a fair amount of resilience in the sense that they 've had to deal with suffering already, personal suffering.” In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator has severe depression, at the very least, and knows that she can get better if she is given the right treatment. While trying to get better, she can’t help but be fixated on the yellow wallpaper in her room. The yellow wallpaper in this story is a representation of the narrator’s relationship with her disease.

Imagine being waited on hand and foot in a mansion, yet removed from society, your own baby and any work that arouses your mind. Such is the life of the wife in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, whose husband diagnoses her with a temporary nervous depression and leaves her to his improper care which includes isolation, lots of medication and a strict suspension of mental stimulation. The short story reflects the excessive power of men over their wives during the nineteenth century, while challenging the patriarchal conditions in unconventional manners. Despite her husband’s positive intentions, his remedies become the conditions that drive her completely insane. Despite the irrationality of the narrator’s insanity to others,

Her passion is to write and by doing so we are able to follow her on a

In "The Yellow Wallpaper," Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells a psychological horror story depicting the narrator's descent into madness while struggling to recover from an episode of depression.

The term “American” is universally meant to symbolize the great freedom and expression that the citizens of the United States are permitted to express; however, women were hardly given the same freedoms as men. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” offers a critical review of American society in the late 19th century of the societal expectations and the society’s oppression of women. The disregard for an entire gender and it’s rights problematizes the term “American” by puncturing the veil of perfection that Americans are believed to exhibit. Gilman identifies the clear gender roles of the late 1800s as she offers a feminist argument for the under-appreciated and disregarded “American” females.

The short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a perfect example of a story that needs to be reanalyzed from a feminist perspective. “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written in 1892 which was during the time period that feminists initially emerged and began fighting for women’s rights. This was also the time that women began trying to showing their equality to men and proving that women could be just as useful outside the home as within. However, in literature, women were still being portrayed as weak, feeble-minded, and incapable of doing anything except for chores. Due to this information, “The Yellow Wallpaper” needs to be re-evaluated because of its set gender roles, its put-downs of women, and its blatant disregard of the female brain.

“I don 't like to look out of the windows even – there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as I did?” the woman behind the pattern was an image of herself. She has been the one “stooping and creeping.” The Yellow Wallpaper was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In the story, three characters are introduced, Jane (the narrator), John, and Jennie. The Yellow Wallpaper is an ironic story that takes us inside the mind and emotions of a woman suffering a slow mental breakdown. The narrator begins to think that another woman is creeping around the room behind the wallpaper, attempting to "break free", so she locks herself in the room and begins to tear down pieces of the wallpaper to rescue this trapped woman. To end the story, John unlocks the door and finds Jane almost possessed by the woman behind the wallpaper. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist background gives a feminist standpoint in The Yellow Wallpaper because the narrator’s husband, John acts superior to the narrator.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a detailed account of the author’s battle with depression and mental illness. Gilman’s state of mental illness and delusion is portrayed in this narrative essay. Through her account of this debilitating illness, the reader is able to relate her behavior and thoughts to that of an insane patient in an asylum. She exhibits the same type of thought processes and behaviors that are characteristic of this kind of person. In addition, she is constantly treated by those surrounding her as if she were actually in some form of mental hospital.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story in which Charlotte Perkins Gillman, the author, presents a feminist writing. The narrator is a wife, and a mother experiencing mental illness, most likely Post-partum depression. The narrator’s name is unrevealed throughout the story, symbolizing the insignificant role women had during the time of the writing. Her husband, John, whom is a physician does not believe she is ill. He shows his role superior to hers, showing how the men acted towards women. Gillman utilizes three main literary tools to illustrate her message towards feminism such as, theme, symbolism, and imagery.