The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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.

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

July 3, 1860, Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born. Gilman’s life began troubled. Her father left the family, “leaving Charlotte’s mother to raise two children on her own… as a result her education suffered greatly.” Coming back from her troubled past would prove to be a difficult task. At the age of twenty- four “Gilman married… Charles Stetson.” Following their marriage Charlotte and her husband had a baby girl named Katherine. Gilman had always suffered from depression, but it became much worse after having her baby. After spending much time in sadness and despair

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

In the short story The Yellow Wallpaper, the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses this story give a voice to the women that were dealing with oppression from men. Women during the time when this story was written were almost exclusively under the dominance of males. They were mainly house wives, and did what the male forced them to do. Many women were working in the house, and not allowed to leave, consequently making them lonely and depressed. Because of this, women were not as educated as men were, and did not have the power to do what they wanted to accomplish. The narrator is locked into an upstairs room with this wallpaper that she describes as “repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight”( p.480) . The color yellow means “the color of sickness” The wallpaper symbolizes her oppression.

do and maintain which is why they are so quick to frown upon women when they do not succeed these goals. Through this reading, you will begin to understand the suffering that women had gone through in order to break free of their cages. Two English literature stories that prove this are “The Yellow Wallpaper” which was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, which gives the point of view of a man through a woman, and “A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner, told from the point of view a man. In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” the reader is able to see how women are treated in this time period when something occurs to be wrong with them. While in the story, “A Rose for Emily”

In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a woman, the narrator, is isolated to the point of insanity by her husband, John. The very isolation that he thinks will cure her is actually causing her to delve deeper into her insanity. In A Doll House, Torvald isolates Nora from her identity. Torvald treats and adorns Nora like a doll instead of an individual. Nora relies so much on Torvald that his selfish reaction to her forgery kindles a passion in her. The speaker in The Raven isolates himself in his grief that eventually reaches a point of hysteria whenever he hears the raven. The characters’ confinement reaches a point when the desire to escape blossoms inside of them.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut. Her parents, Mary Fitch Perkins and Fredrick Beecher Perkins, divorced in 1869. Her dad, a distinguished librarian and magazine editor, played a large role in her education, stressing science and history. Fitch was often away for long periods of time during her childhood, leaving his wife and children with other family members. This frequently exposed Gilman to her three great aunts who, along with her mother 's self-reliance, influenced Gilman 's feminist beliefs and need to effect social reform ("The Yellow Wallpaper" 278). One of her great aunts, Harriet Beecher Stowe, supported the abolition of slavery and wrote Uncle Tim 's Cabin, a story depicting the life of African American slaves (Wikipedia contributors). Her second great aunt, Catherine Beecher, was a prominent advocate for domestic feminism and the third, Isabella Beecher Hocker, was an advocate for women 's suffrage. As an adult, Gilman directed the independence she had as a child towards feminism becoming a leading feminists and social activist. Gilman insisted on payment for her household chores and while supporting herself as a teacher and commercial

Stories can have a person feel like they can relate to the characters and have ways to express their emotions. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story written in the late nineteenth century, 1890 's a time period where women were oppressed. This is the time of era, where women have no voice, they stayed home and did wifely duties. The story is written in first person, however we never learn the woman 's name in the story. She stays anonymous, but we learn a lot about this woman. However, the narrators name may be Jane. Gilman may have slipped the narrators name at the end of the story when she is free, but then again, It is not a complete known fact. She is however the protagonist in the story. We learn that she has a mental illness or possibly some sort of post-partum depression and she is not able to get proper treatment, due to the lack of her husband who seems in denial as a physician. Charlotte Perkins Gilman lets us know that she is in a summer vacation house and is mesmerized by this yellow wallpaper in this room. She becomes fixated. The pattern of the wallpaper is not together and crazy and torn, ugly and, a pointless pattern but has hidden expression, which she is using the wall paper to symbolize her life. The wallpaper has the sense of entrapment, and a distraction that becomes an obsession and slowly trajectory towards madness. We will discover many elements of this story along with the story being in the American Feminist time period of women

Accepting that one person’s craziness can be another’s reality can be the barrier between acceptances in society. Preconception can come in any form and from anyone: family, friend, co-worker, or stranger. Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes of her reality in “The Yellow Wallpaper” as a semi-autobiography. As a feminist, Gilman gives the silent woman of her decade a voice through such works. In detail, “The Yellow Wallpaper” tells of the narrator suffering from post-partum depression and the only cure, giving by her husband, is rest. A variety of elements play a role in this character’s demise: era, gender inequality, ineffective communication, and personal weaknesses.

During the 19th century European and American women lived during a time in which was characterized by gender inequality. In the beginning of the century, women enjoyed only a few of the legal, social, or political rights that we now take for granted: they could not vote, and were barred from institutions of higher education. Women were expected to remain obedient to their fathers and husbands. Occupational choices were also tremendously limited. Middle- and upper-class women generally remained home, caring for their children and running the home. Lower-class women often did work outside the home, but usually as poorly-paid domestic servants or laborers in factories or mills. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s essay The Yellow Wallpaper addressed and portrayed these many issues that women faced during this time.

American writer, and lecturer, an early theorist of the feminist movement, Charlotte Perkins Gilman refused to call herself a “feminist”. Gilman would be referred to as a “humanist.” Gilman fought for equality amongst all people. Amazingly, Gilman wrote over two hundred short stories and ten novels. Her main goal was the cause of women’s suffrage. Gilman attempted to reach a wide variety of people, especially women, in an attempt to awaken them to her revolutionary ideas. She wanted absolute equality for women and rejected all special privileges (Daniel 52). With her social commentaries she advocated her life to inspire woman

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).

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a semi- autobiography by author Charlotte Perkins Gilman who wrote it after going through a severe postpartum depression. Gilman became involved in feminist activities and her writing made her a major figure in the women 's movement. Books such as “Women and Economics,” written in 1898, are proof of her importance as a feminist. Here she states that women who learn to be economically independent can then create equality between men and women. She wrote other books such as “His Religion And Hers” which is about a religion freed from the dictates of oppressive patriarchal instincts. She also wrote “The Man-Made World” which is a feminist classic that reflects on female independence and how women should fully use their abilities for the benefit of society and for their own satisfaction. Gilman devoted a lifetime to thinking and writing and how to make better people and how to make a better world. Through her work, she aimed at the transformation of society through fictions or essays that were based on realities of everyday experience in which she made suggestions for changed behaviors at all levels of society.

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