The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In her story, The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman expresses exasperation towards the separate male and female roles expected of her society, and the evident repressed rights of a woman versus the active duties of a man. The story depicts the methods taken to cure a woman of her psychological state during Gilman’s time, and delineates the dominant cure of the time period, “the resting cure,” which encouraged the restraint of the imagination ("The Yellow Wallpaper: Looking Beyond the Boundaries") Gilman uses the unnamed narrator to represent the average repressed woman of her time and how her needs were neglected in an attempt to mark a fixed distinction between the standards and expectations of men and women. John, the narrator’s husband, take the designated and patriarchal role of a man who believes he knows everything there is to know about the human mind. His belief of his superior knowledge pushes him to condescend, overshadow, and misunderstand his wife. As a result, his wife loses control of her life and escapes into her own fantasy world, where she is able dominate her imagination, free her mind, and fall into insanity. Gilman describes her era’s approach toward female psychology in order to criticize the patriarchal society she lived in as well as to reveal its effects on the women of her time.

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

The structure of the text, particularly evident in the author’s interactions with her husband, reveals the binary opposition between the façade of a middle-class woman living under the societal parameters of the Cult of Domesticity and the underlying suffering and dehumanization intrinsic to marriage and womanhood during the nineteenth century. While readers recognize the story for its troubling description of the way in which the yellow wallpaper morphs into a representation of the narrator’s insanity, the most interesting and telling component of the story lies apart from the wallpaper. “The Yellow Wallpaper” outwardly tells the story of a woman struggling with post-partum depression, but Charlotte Perkins Gilman snakes expressions of the true inequality faced within the daily lives of nineteenth century women throughout the story. Although the climax certainly surrounds the narrator’s overpowering obsession with the yellow wallpaper that covers the room to which her husband banished her for the summer, the moments that do not specifically concern the wallpaper or the narrator’s mania divulge a deeper and more powerful understanding of the torturous meaning of womanhood.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s brilliant work, The Yellow Wallpaper, readers explore the consequences of the ignorance of mental health, as well Gilman’s underlying message of the restriction of women, in nineteenth century America. The author of this story doesn’t want readers to focus on the progression of the woman when realizing her real situation, but in my opinion, how Gilman comments with this piece of fiction to the real oppression of women, and lack of weight Medicine held on the patient 's opinions in Charlotte’s society.

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.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was one of the most well-known authors of the (insert decade). Her works propelled the feminist movement through stories than chronicled the oppression of struggles of women, the most famous being The Yellow Wallpaper. The Yellow Wallpaper tells the story of an unnamed woman descending into madness from the “rest cure” given by her doctor husband. The story alludes to Gilman’s own experiences with the “rest cure,” meant to “cure” her postpartum depression, after which she fell deeper into depression because of it. In the story, the narrator begins to hallucinate, mixing reality with illusion of figures in the wallpaper. Through her use of reality and illusion, Gilman shows the manipulative nature of oppression, how women are manipulated to think against their conscience.

Many intellectual artists, who are widely acclaimed for their literary work, live in a world characterized by “progressive insanity” (Gilman 20). Charlotte Perkins Gilman was one such individual. A writer during the early 20th century, Gilman suffered from bouts of deep depression, due part to her dissatisfaction with the limitations of her role as wife and mother. Her writing, particularly her famous story “The Yellow Wallpaper” reflects experiences from her personal life. In doing so, “she achieved some control over both her illness and her past” (Lane 128). Many people still admire the fact that Gilman wrote her piece “to save people from being driven crazy;” however, perhaps she

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

An inner battle between oneself wanting freedom and a scape and society finding its ways of not letting that happen. In “The yellow Wallpaper” author Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes a story in 1899 of a woman trapped by the oppression lead by society which at the time could be said men. The female in the story finds herself trap in a yellow wallpaper drifting into madness, losing her sanity until she gains her freedom.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was one of the first female writers to compose a woman’s point of view experience on mental illness. She uses characterization and setting to express such vivid imagery of the yellow wallpaper. Perkins displays the damaging effect that isolation has on a woman in her deteriorating mental state. Gilman ties the relationship of characterization and setting through depression and mental torture.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper the main character is a symbol of the authors personal experience. It is also symbol for all the repressed woman of that her time. You never no the name of this woman who is suffering so, throughout the entire story. She seems to lack any of her own identity. She is treated as weak and un-knowledgeable even when it comes to her own health. Her concerns are considered frivolous.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short piece, The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator faces many adversities as a woman such as: mental health, and living in a time period when they are not treated equal to men. Gilman’s personal life is reflected through this story because she dealt with similar challenges the narrator herself has to overcome. “Her lectures, novels, short stories, magazine articles (including her best known work, “The Yellow Wallpaper”), and nonfiction books challenged the dominant ideas about women’s role in society and helped shape the movement for women’s suffrage and women’s rights. (Dreier, 2016)” The theme and symbols not only illustrate how the roles of men and women are portrayed unequal to one another, but also the transition to insanity that comes from enforced suppression. The state of ignorance placed on women is shown throughout the story by the obstacles, reactions, and mental state.

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.

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts a young woman’s gradual descent into insanity due to her entrapment, both mentally and physically, in the restrictive cult of domesticity. Through the narrator’s creeping spiral into madness, Gilman seeks to shed light upon the torturous and constraining societal conditions in which women are expected to live, that permeates throughout all aspects of their lives. At first glance to an average reader unfamiliar with Gilman’s history, “The Yellow Wallpaper” seems to just provide a tale about the oppressive relationship between the man and the woman in a domestic environment, however, once Gilman’s own personal life is uncovered, the story takes on a new level of depth.