The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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;

All throughout history there has been a stigma around mental illness and feminism. “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the 1900’s. “The Yellow Wallpaper” has many hidden truths within the story. The story was an embellished version her own struggle with what was most likely post-partum depression. As the story progresses, one can see that she is not receiving proper treatment for her depression and thus it is getting worse. Gilman uses the wallpaper and what she sees in it to symbolize her desire to escape her depression and the controlling nature of the patriarchal society of the twentieth century. The story shows an inside look into the thoughts and feelings of a person with a mental illness such as depression. Gilman also uses symbolism to showcase how the male figures in her life had control over her well-being more than she did. Both her husband and doctor hindered her from healing by not listening to her when she expressed what she felt would help her. She does not clearly say that she feels overwhelmed by the patriarchal society of the 1900’s; however, one can infer this by her wording and actions throughout the course of the story. Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses “The Yellow Wallpaper” to reveal the truths of a woman’s everyday struggles in a patriarchal society and also the deeper struggles of a woman with depression.

An anonymous author once said, “What consumes your mind, controls your life.” In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator is suffering from severe depression, at the very least and constantly tries to get better. While trying to get better she becomes increasingly fixated on the yellow wallpaper that encompasses her in her room. It gets to the point where the wallpaper is all she thinks about and slowly, it starts to control her life. The yellow wallpaper in this story is a representation of the narrator’s relationship with her disease.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is known as a feminist story with obvious slanders of a desperate need for change in society. Gilman getting “The Yellow Wallpaper” published was a big step forward in the feminist movement as well as for the health and well-being of women everywhere. Even today, Gilman’s

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.

Often times we can see that a writer's personal life or "Biography" can have a large impact on their stories. That seems to very much be the case in the story "The Yellow Wallpaper," where we see the author's life greatly influence her work. The biography of Gilman is a fascinating one starting in 1860, on July the 3rd, the day she was born in Hartford, Connecticut. She was born to Mary Perkins and Frederick Beecher Perkins. Gilman's great aunts were Harriet Beecher

The “Yellow Wall-Paper” is a reflection of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s personal situations, regarding the protection of the rights of woman. She provides a critique on traditional feminine roles, and women’s desperation to get out of them. In the short story, the author depicts the idea that women conforming to the norms of society can be driven to destruction. Her criticism  of gender conflicts is portrayed through the journal entries of the narrator. In order to illustrate her feminist concerns about gender equality, Gilman employs the characters of John, Jennie, and the narrator.

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 The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story first published in 1892 that depicts a woman’s struggles against a heavily patriarchal society while dealing with post-partum depression. A feminist text generally points out deficiencies in society in regards to gender equality. This is seen throughout the story which makes it possible analyze the text with the use of feminist theory. The oppression that women endured during the 19th century is seen in this story through the actions of her husband as well as in the crumbling of the Narrators mental state.

Madness is what essentially haunts humans. Whether they are born with it or it is brought upon, it leaves a blurred rush of lunacy in its habitants minds. Competently so, a handful of these beings can write and express these tangled minds into compositions that leave the reader cognized and fascinated. Respectably, an author that always seems to come along any viewer’s mind is Charlotte Perkins Gilman, known especially for her controversial short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. The piece deals with a woman who is on a forced vacation from her conventional role as a wife and a mother, diagnosed and treated by her doctor as well as her husband for a slight case of depression. Her primary “treatment” for this is predominantly a week-long stay in an ugly, yellow wallpaper-covered secluded room where she sits and “rests” mostly alone for an extended period of time. In the story, Gilman confronts ideas of isolation from her main character’s world, drawing out attributes from wallpaper and its designs to represent the escape from the society in which she lives in. Alike, she also ties the ideas of loneliness into this character’s stream-of-consciousness by discussing her situation in a passive mindset. Moreover, by using different symbols and stream-of-consciousness, Charlotte Perkins Gilman illustrates the deterioration of a female’s mental health when forced into isolation in her short story, The Yellow Wallpaper.

The citizens of the United States have progressed so much over the past few decades that it becomes hard to imagine what life was like before present day terms. Not only has it advanced so far technologically, but the women in America’s society have covered a substantial amount of ground especially in the middle of the 19th century. Feminism became a huge issue worldwide and America was no exception. Author Charlotte Perkins Gilman demonstrates why feminism is so important with her work, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by channeling her own experiences to show readers that without feminism, the life of a woman is very different.

The 19th century was a man’s world and it seemed that women just lived in it. Women were expected to fall into gender roles that society had created for them. While these gender roles are not as enforced today, they were the standard norms for the everyday man and woman in the 19th century. Due to these gender roles, women were heavily oppressed by society. Charlotte Perkins Gilman experienced this oppression, especially while trying to deal with her post-partum depression. As a result, she was inspired to write the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” in which she tells the tale of a woman that has a severe mental break due to her mental illness. The narrator is also heavily oppressed by her husband and represents the society of her time. “The Yellow Wallpaper” expresses the oppression of women through the husband’s control over the narrator in which she is isolated, treated as a child, and forced to partake in a harmful treatment of her condition.

In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, we never learn the narrators’ name, which begs the question could Gilman be narrating her own life. The tale was written in the late eighteen hundreds as a private diary of sorts and is a lugubrious narration about a woman who has quite possibly went mad. The narrator’s husband John and her brother both respected physician diagnosis her with nervous depression and at the time, a Victorian era of time, the cure for losing one’s mind was to rest. While she may have indeed been suffering from depression which dictionary.com defines as “sad and gloomy; dejected; downcast” (dictoionarycomdepression) she just had a child so she may have actually been suffering from postpartum depression. Due to her diagnosis and because she tired so easily, she was forbidden from working, her attempts at conversations were stifled and her hallowed writing was even frowned upon.

Before writing “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman had to overcome a great amount of obstacles that stood in front of her. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in Hartford, Connecticut and had one brother who was a year older than her. This made a considerable impact on her life, as her father abandoned her mother not long after she turned five ("Charlotte Perkins…”). Her brother became the only male figure in her life, and he was not much older than she, so her mother had to become both mother and father. On top of that, when her father left, he took the whole family’s money and left them penniless, forcing them “to move at least once a year for eighteen years” (Miskolcze 149).

Learning about how an author lived/lives their life can really change the way that a story is seen. Without the background knowledge of the author’s life all the reader has to rely on is imagination to fill in the blanks between the story and writer. Wither or not the story is based off the writer’s imagination or not can really change the perceptive that a story is seen. Take for example my reactions to the tale “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. My reaction to reading the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” before knowing anything about Gilman is the first thing that will be discussed. Followed by some information I found during the research process and then how my views of work changed with the information I found. Ending with how I think that knowing the authors life can change the perspective which their writing is seen.