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.

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.

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

During the nineteenth century, women and men played vastly different roles. While men had the free will to choose the life paths they desired, women lacked such privileges. Women, instead, were expected to tend to domestic responsibilities. Unlike men, they were unable to voice their opinions, instead, myriads of them lived monotonous lives with their, often condescending, husbands. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, portrays a woman in the nineteenth century descending into psychosis. After the birth of her daughter, the unnamed narrator presumably endures postpartum depression and is forced into bed rest as a cure. In her male-dominated society, the narrator often feels as though she is at a loss of control over her life. Despite what she believes is best for her own betterment, her husband, John, overrides her inputs. She is stripped away from the outside world and left with nothing more than her concealed diary entries and the horrid yellow wallpaper of her bedroom. Although John seemingly wants the best for his wife, his dismissiveness towards her mental state and solicitations necessarily cause her to become deranged; her breakdown is a result of feeling powerless as she is encaged in a house she does not care for, restricted from her activities, and her inability to communicate effectively.

Many people know what it feels like to be “trapped” in the emotional sense of things, but how many can say they have been both physically and emotionally trapped. Charlotte Perkins Gilman used her personal bout with depression to create a powerful fictional narrative, which has broad implications for women. When the narrator recognizes that there is more than one trapped, creeping woman, Gilman indicates that the meaning of her story extends beyond an isolated, individual situation. Gilman’s main purpose in writing The Yellow Wallpaper is to doom not only a specific medical treatment but also the misogynistic principles and resulting sexual politics that make such a treatment possible. Those things lead to the major themes of the story: freedom, confinement, and madness.

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

Throughout Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the author displays the destructive outcomes of isolation, inequality, and limitations. Following childbirth and being committed to an imbalanced marriage, Gilman experienced a period of severe depression and was prescribed the rest-cure, complete bed rest and reduced intellectual activity, which stands as the basis for her short story. Due to the author’s personal experiences, she published “The Yellow Wallpaper” in 1899 to prevent other members of society from being driven to the verge of insanity and to demonstrate the kind of madness produced by the popular rest-cure. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s work exhibits the inequitable social status of women in the nineteenth

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.

Humans are flawed individuals. Although flaws can be bad, people learn and grow from the mistakes made. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, gives one a true look at using flaws to help one grow. Gilman gives her reader’s a glimpse into what her life would have consisted of for a period of time in her life. Women were of little importance other than to clean the house and to reproduce. This story intertwines the reality of what the lives of woman who were considered to be suffering mental disorders were like and elements that make one as a reader feel as though they are living the hell that Charlotte Perkins Gilman lived herself. This story can be interpreted several different ways, yet one can ultimately realize that Gilman’s goal was to show the horrors she faced. Looking at the life that Gilman lived, one better comes to understand what “The Yellow Wallpaper” is truly about.

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.

Often, it said that a man is the first to notice a woman’s madness. However, in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman proves her insanity through her husband’s denial of her condition. Although known for her dark personal revelations, there is also a lot of controversy, inspiring young readers to criticize—as well as commend—her writings. While Gilman’s memoir describes her crucial path of depression and repression, the author is ignorant to that fact that she is essentially describing a prevalent allegory for men living upper class using dialogue and symbolism, which ultimately creates a new identity for women in the late 1800’s. Set in the 1890’s, society lived in a patriarchy where men were commonly stereotyped as superior to women.

Hysteria is mentioned almost immediately in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s semi- autobiographical short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. We encounter the narrator through epistolary-like entries that she tells us is in a journal. The main character is a well off, married woman who is suffering from, what we now know to be, post-partum depression. She is taken by her husband to an isolated country house where she can rest, and upon their arrival to the house she is placed in a former nursery covered in a hideous, yellow wallpaper; which slowly drives her insane.

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

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author of the realism story The Yellow Wallpaper, struggled with depression, which makes a great connection between her and the narrator. Realism, which is an accurate and detailed portrayal of actual life, is what Gilman used to describe how women were treated in the 1890’s and how depression can affect one’s body. The author uses the unnamed narrator in this story to explain the reality and horrors of depression in the 18th century. The purpose was to inform her readers of how mistreated women were in this time, especially because of the apprehension she, and others, had to go through. The narrator’s husband may be a leading cause in the reason she got depression, and also a reason she did not get better.