Yellow Wallpaper Influence

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper” we are introduced to a woman who enjoys writing. Gilman does not give the reader the name of the women who narrates the story through her stream of consciousness. She shares that she has a nervous depression condition. John, the narrator’s husband feels it is “a slight hysterical tendency” (266). She has been treated for some nervous habits that she feels are legitimately causing harm to her way of life. However she feels her husband, a physician, and her doctor believe that she is embellishing her condition. The woman shares with the reader early in the story that she is defensive of how others around her perceive her emotional state. This causes a small abrasion of animosity that

John’s views as a doctor forbid any type of activity, because he feels it will only worsen her fragile condition. She says, “So I take phosphates or phosphites- whichever it is- and tonics, and air and exercise, and journeys, and am absolutely for bidden to ‘work’ until I am well again” (Gilman 221). But the narrator believes she would feel better if she could write because she does not believe it to be “work”. “Personally I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good” (Gilman 221). The narrator believes that writing would help her get better more than the rest cure. John addresses his wife as “‘little girl,’ and chooses the nursery rather than one of the adult bedrooms for his wife” (Griffin 11). The narrator has absolute no control over her own care, “she disagrees with her husband’s orders forbidding her to work, yet her opinion goes unrecognized.” (Griffin 11). He treats her like a weak, fragile child, which for the most part is what women were described as in that time period.

The "Yellow Wall Paper "by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a chilling study and experiment of mental disorder in nineteenth century. This is a story of a miserable wife, a young woman in anguish, stress surrounding her in the walls of her bedroom and under the control of her husband doctor, who had given her the treatment of isolation and rest. This short story vividly reflects both a woman in torment and oppression as well as a woman struggling for self expression. The setting of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the driving force in the story because it is the main factor that caused the narrator to go insane.

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.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” a short story about a mentally ill women,written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman at age 32, in 1892 is a story with a hidden meaning and many truths. Charlotte Perkins Gilman coincidentally also had a mental illness and developed cancer leading her to kill herself in the sixties. The story begins with Jane, the mentally ill woman who feels a bit distressed, and although both of the well respected men in her life are physicians she is put simply on a “rest cure”. This rest cure as well as many symbols such as the Yellow Wallpaper, her journal, and her inevitable breakdown are prime examples of the typical life of a woman in this time period and their suppressed lives that they lived even with something as serious as a

Unlike the narrator in the story, who eventually frees from behind the wallpaper " I’ve got out at last…And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!”(Gilman 1899 p.9) Gilman did not live to see her life’s work complete. As only small advances in Woman’s Rights were made before her passing in 1935. Gilman’s freedom from confinement is not into insanity when she finally rips down the paper, but goes through a crisis

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is the story of a woman descending into psychosis in a creepy tale which depicts the harm of an old therapy called “rest cure.” This therapy was used to treat women who had “slight hysterical tendencies” and depression, and basically it consisted of the inhibition of the mental processes. The label “slight hysterical tendency” indicates that it is not seen as a very important issue, and it is taken rather lightly. It is also ironic because her illness is obviously not “slight” by any means, especially towards the end when the images painted of her are reminiscent of a psychotic, maniacal person, while she aggressively tears off wallpaper and confuses the real world with her alternative world she has

“In 1887, Perkins Gilman went to a specialist in hope of curing her ailment. She had some nervous breakdown (BASSUK). The specialist advised her “rest cure” treatment. It consists of lying on the bed all day and indulging oneself in any intellectual activity for two hours a day. After the three months treatment, Gillman said that she was close to marginal of utter psychological ruin. At the start of the first few decades, readers of “the yellow wallpaper” assumed it as a horror fiction story positioned in the Gothic category. Since 1960s, it has been considered as women’s movement demonstrating 19th era attitudes to women’s physical and spiritual health.” After the introduction, analysis of story is being done which is followed by analysis of one major character. At the end, symbolic point of view of the story is being told.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," is the disheartening tale of a woman suffering from postpartum depression. Set during the late 1890s, the story shows the mental and emotional results of the typical "rest cure" prescribed during that era and the narrator’s reaction to this course of treatment. It would appear that Gilman was writing about her own anguish as she herself underwent such a treatment with Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell in 1887, just two years after the birth of her daughter Katherine. The rest cure that the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" describes is very close to what Gilman herself experienced; therefore, the story can be read as reflecting the feelings of women like herself who suffered through

"The Yellow Wallpaper," is a larger-than-life version of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s own personal experiences. She grieved for several years in depression, as her physician diagnosed her with “neurasthenia” and prescribed the "rest cure" seen in the story. Unable to write or seek company, Gilman's rest drove her insane for three months. Gilman wrote the story not simply to change one man's view of neurasthenia, but to utilize the floor as a symbol of the oppression of women in a patriarchal society as mentioned in her article “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper”.

The narrator who was modeled after Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in “The Yellow Wallpaper” was a young wife and mother who has recently began to suffer symptoms of depression and anxiety. Her psychopathic mindset caused herself to go into a deep depression and longing for a way to quote “get out of the house.” The narrator lost all since of reality while she wrote in her journal for a feeling of security and comfort due to her not so supportive husband. Maybe, her insanity and craziness is most likely a result of suffering from post partum depression because she had just recently had a baby whom she is not allowed to see. Maybe, towards the end it is never revealed that she had a severe case of schizophrenia which was what caused her to be both

Charlotte Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper,” creating a nameless narrator who follows her husband’s orders by attempting to avoid acknowledging the extent of her inner issues. The narrator is placed in a house that is motioned as "haunted" in hopes of curing her depression. Her husband keeps her in one specific room, forbidding her from using her imagination in any way in order to insure she is caused no stress. Even writing is denied, the one thing this woman wants to do. She wants to write and create which may have helped her overcome her mental illness, but is rejected in fear of causing her too much stress.

    "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1890 and eventually published in 1892 in the New England Magazine and in William Dean Howells' collection, Great Modern American Stories (Shumaker 94). The story was original not only because of its subject matter, but also because it is written in the form of a loosely connected journal. It follows the narrator's private thoughts which become increasingly more confusing. The structure consists of disjointed sentences as the narrator gradually descends more and more into her madness as her only escape from an oppressive husband and society.

“He told me all his opinions, so I had the same ones too; or if they were different I hid them, since he wouldn’t have cared for that” (Ibsen 109). As this quote suggests Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and Henrik Ibsen, in A Doll House dramatize that, for woman, silent passivity and submissiveness can lead to madness.

Gilman wrote her short story, The Yellow Wallpaper in 1892 after undergoing S. Weir Mitchell’s, a popular neurologist of the 19th century, “rest cure” treatment where she was to “live a domestic life as possible” (Perkins. 4). Through her short story Perkins utilizes gothic fiction, a type of horror fiction, to vocalize her private and personal traumatic experience so that no other woman would have to. The format of the story is written from the perspective of a woman with an unnamed nervous condition, who writes a collection of journal entries to record her daily thoughts, while she is being treated for her