The Yellow Wallpaper Synthesis

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.

B. Gilman describes the unequal status of a wife, the narrator, who suffers from nervous depression.

With the ending near, the narrator gradually descends into madness. While examining the wallpaper closely at night she narrates, “The woman behind it shakes it!” she writes, “and she crawls around fast and her crawling shakes it all over.” “And in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard” (Gilman 516). The woman that the narrator sees is actually herself. It is a projection of her because she cannot escape John’s control just how the woman cannot escape the wallpaper. Her illness has become so great she thinks a woman is shaking the wallpaper around the entire room. The problem here is John’s treatment. It has caused her to believe in ghostly objects that do not exist. The phrase, “her crawling shakes it all over” shows how John’s treatment has affected her. The narrator crawls and creeps around the room. She goes

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” tells the story of a woman suffering from post-partum depression, undergoing the sexist psychological treatments of mental health, that took place during the late nineteenth century. The narrator in Gilman’s story writes about being forced to do nothing, and how that she feels that is the worst possible treatment for her. In this particular scene, the narrator writes that she thinks normal work would do her some good, and that writing allows her to vent, and get across her ideas that no one seems to listen to. Gilman’s use of the rhetorical appeal pathos, first-person point of view, and forceful tone convey her message that confinement is not a good cure for mental health, and that writing,

The main character was suffering from more than just a post-partum depression but possibly a severe case of schizophrenia. While in the confinement, the narrator takes the reader through her declining mental journey and how she is affected by the solitary confinement in a yellow papered room. She was psychologically affected by her mental state and the confinement away from everybody. Her mental state became a fanatical delusional survival situation for her freedom which led to her mental demise.

  “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a symbolic tale of one woman’s struggle to break free from her mental prison.  Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows the reader how quickly insanity takes hold when a person is taken out of context and completely isolated from the rest of the world.  The narrator is a depressed woman who cannot handle being alone and retreats into her own delusions as opposed to accepting her reality.  This mental prison is a symbol for the actual repression of women’s rights in society and we see the consequences when a woman tries to free herself from this social slavery.

"Mitchell's patients lost much of themselves as people" (53).  Gilman herself, after sinking into a deep depression, was sent to Mitchell in Philadelphia for his rest cure.  After a month of treatment Mitchell concluded that there was nothing wrong with her and sent her home with these instructions: "Live as domestic a life as possible.  Have your child with you at all times.  Lie down an hour after each meal.  Have but two hours of intellectual life a day.  And never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live." (Gilman, Autobiography 62).  Gilman followed these instructions for several months until she came extremely close to losing her mind.  Says Gilman of this time: "I made a rag baby, hung it on the doorknob and played with it.  I would crawl into remote closets and under beds to hide from the grinding pressure of that profound distress." (63).  It is exactly this situation that lead Charlotte Perkins Gilman to write her eerily accurate tale of one woman's forced regression into insanity.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is an interesting story told from the journals of a woman who progressively loses her mind being locked in her bedroom, but underneath the surface this short story shows us a woman who is at first confined by, but progressively freed from the gender roles and expectations put upon her by society and her spouse.

Charlotte Gilman revealed that she wrote The Yellow Wallpaper in the purpose that “it was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked” (Gilman). The Yellow Wallpaper, a short story written in 1899, is still questioned and analyzed to this day, over one hundred years after it was first published. Although Gilman has formally explained her meaning behind the piece, this has not hampered the countless interpretations of the text made by readers and literary critics alike. The story is one which was quite unlike the literature of the time period, as it is one which questioned social constructs which existed for women and marriages which had not been extensively addressed in society.

In a frenzy, she begins tearing at the paper to free the woman and does not relent her smudging and scratching at the wall even after her husband faints in the room. The themes of women’s autonomy and their treatment by men and the medical system are central to “The Yellow Wallpaper.” These themes were especially relevant in the late 19th century, when the story was written. The experiences described in the story mirror the ones of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who drew from her own experience with isolation and lack of autonomy during her first marriage and struggle with postpartum depression. Her personal insight provides authentic emotion to the piece and makes the depictions of mental health even more believable.

We also learned that she is even locked upstairs by a gate at the top of the stairs while her husband leaves to go to work for hours, so Charlotte must simply sit and look out of her window, slowly driving herself insane. Just like any average person would behave while in her position, she starts to exhibit actions and behaviors of a mentally insane person. Charlotte’s actions only become more strange the longer she is isolated and even when her sister-in-law, Jennie, moves into the house with her it does not help her condition. Jennie is only trying to help; however, in her state Charlotte does not know this and suspects that Jennie is plotting to send her away and starts spying on Jennie from the corners of rooms and such. Her husband forthright threatens to send Charlotte to the very same doctor, of whom she has heard countless horror stories about, she believes Jennie does; in turn, Charlotte attempts to act normally out of fear of her own

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story told from the perspective of a woman who’s believed to be “crazy”. The narrator believes that she is sick while her husband, John, believes her to just be suffering from a temporary nervous depression. The narrator’s condition worsens and she begins to see a woman moving from behind the yellow wallpaper in their bedroom. The wallpaper captures the narrator’s attention and initial drives her mad. Charlotte Gilman uses a lot of personal pieces into her short story, from her feministic views to her personal attributes. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story written from a feminist and autobiographical standpoint and includes elements, like symbols and perspective that the reader can analyze in different ways.

The geographical, physical, and historical settings in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" were more than the primary character could handle. The geography would lead to think she could enjoy the environment, but she chose not to. The physical setting showed us the reader just how grotesque and unbearable it would be to live a room in which the wallpaper to over the narrators mind. Lastly, we looked at how historically women were not allowed to speak their minds about how they felt. Maybe now that John has seen his wife go completely insane for himself he will finally seek extra attention for

Charlotte Gilman, through the first person narrator, speaks to the reader of the stages of psychic disintegration by sharing the narrator's heightened perceptions: "That spoils my ghostliness, I am afraid, but I don't care--there is something strange about the house--I can feel it" (304). The conflicting

The woman behind this work of literature portrays the role of women in the society during that period of time. "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a well written story describing a woman who suffers from insanity and how she struggles to express her own thoughts and feelings. The author uses her own experience to criticize male domination of women during the nineteenth century. Although the story was written fifty years ago, "The Yellow Wallpaper" still brings a clear message how powerless women were during that time.