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Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

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Are we women or are we property? The Yellow Wallpaper, a dramatic short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, concerns a woman who is mentally ill and is misdiagnosed by her physician, confining her in a room. Her mental health state regresses as she goes from wanting to escape the room to accepting it and no longer wishing to leave. This state is exacerbated by the relationship with her husband, who is also her diagnosing physician. The treatment of the purposefully unnamed narrator mirrors the treatment of women in Victorian times. In this age, women did not have the option of free choice. As the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper paints the setting of a room, describing it only as a chamber to keep something in, she displays clearly that she does not like the room to her husband, “I …show more content…

After being diagnosed with, “temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 1), the unnamed woman was given a treatment that did not help improve her health. She was told to, “take phosphates or phosphites…tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and… forbidden to ‘work’ until well again” (Gilman 1), although she personally feels, “congenial work with excitement and change, would do me good” (Gilman 1). Pursuing activities that a patient, the narrator in hand, enjoys will encourage improvement whereas stripping enjoyable activities away, will in fact have an opposite effect. The woman trusts her loving husband to help her recover, so she follows his instructions until she starts to hallucinate. John believes isolating his wife will help her recover quickly, yet the reality is that it is doing more damage than repair. This unnamed woman’s hallucinations are a result of this treatment and can reflect how women during the time suffered greatly due to misdiagnosis, as their treatment caused them to get worse than

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While the diary functions as the narrator’s form of escapism, John still influences the way the narrator treats her own breakdown. In her article “Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in The Yellow Wallpaper,” scholar Paula A. Treichler discusses how even the narrator’s personal diary entries are affected by her husband’s expectations of her. Treichler mentions, “At first, she expresses her views … [with] repetition of the impotent refrain, ‘What is one to do?’ The journal entries at this early stage are very tentative and clearly shaped under the stern eye of male judgement” (Treichler 62). In the beginning of the story, the narrator tries to trust her husband’s diagnosis, however, she still admits to feeling nervous and depressed.

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Repressions in “The Yellow Wallpaper” In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, the narrator and her husband John help express a variety of themes addressing marriage, gender roles, and gender discrimination. The short story starts with the narrator and her husband moving into a colonial mansion for the summer. They do this to improve the narrator’s health. Stetson does not tell the readers what the narrator’s illness is; however, from the story it appears as if the narrator is mentally unstable and nervous.

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She feels uncomfortable with everything, but still obeys her husband’s decisions. The husband chooses a large, airy room on the top floor instead of the smaller room on the ground floor that she prefers to live in. She is forbidden to write or work. She becomes absolutely

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650 Words | 3 Pages

The narrator is certain she is really sick, and not just nervously depressed as diagnosed by her husband, but she is confined by her role as a wife and woman, and cannot convince her relatives and friends that something is actually wrong with her. In the story the narrator says, “”If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the

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Regardless of this treatment protocol the protagonist slowly declines into an agitated state of mind and confuses reality with the women in the wallpaper an example of the “rest cure’s” inadequacy.

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1202 Words | 5 Pages

Although she suffers from post-partum depression, her physician husband doesn’t recognize her mental illness. As a result, he puts her under the “rest-cure treatment,” a popular mental health remedy of that time where mental stimulation was highly discouraged by leading “as domestic a life.as possible” (Sahoo 8). However, through the narrator’s diary entries, it’s evident that the treatment only worsens her condition. She starts getting distressed over this “yellow smell” and how it “creeps all over the house.lying in wait” which even pushes her to consider burning the whole house down (Gilman 8). Through the eerie personification of smell and the first-person point of view, the reader is given insight into the state of madness Jane is driven to and the all-encompassing paranoia she deals with.

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Wisal A. Ibrahim AP Literature and Composition 25 February 2023 The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis The short story The Yellow Wallpaper follows the narrator, a nameless upper-middle-class woman from the late 19th century, as she gradually descends into psychosis as a result of her physical environment. The toxic dynamic between the narrator and her doctor, her husband John, plays a critical role in her insanity. Through its use of historical context, characterization, and narration, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author of The Yellow Wallpaper, creates a psychological horror that criticizes the treatment of women in healthcare.

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The Insane Cure Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” provides insights into the harsh societal expectations put on women during the 19th century. Set during a time when women were expected to be only housewives and mothers, the short story illustrates the invalidation faced by many women who were denied proper care for their struggles. During the 1800s, mental illnesses were not quite understood, and the mental health issues of women lacked even more understanding. A cure, created by male physicians, known as the “rest cure” was commonly prescribed to women dealing with any type of mental illness. This cure tried to guide women back into the “proper” place in society by forcing them to focus on only their husbands

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but in reality, he is just making her worse because the treatment doesn’t really make women feel better. The article “Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Paula Treichler would agree with my argument about how her husband’s treatment is causing her to go insane. In the beginning of the article, Treichler talks about how the narrator is forbidden from any sort of activity and how her husband isolates her from talking or seeing other people. In the story, the narrator states “I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus – but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad” which she is talking about how her husband has cut her off and isolated her from the outside world (Gilman 527). That’s why I believe that the rest-cure started her journey of insanity because she was trapped in a creepy

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During the nineteenth century, there were many causes of mental illness from constant pressure of their secondary role in society, lack of love, or even from childbirth. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman produces a short story that mirrors her past experiences of having her mental illness belittled and misunderstood by men. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman’s protagonist, Jane, experiences the same illness Gilman suffered. Jane describes in her diary what she withstands having mental illness and an overprotective husband. The narrator undergoes postpartum depression, and her husband, who is a doctor, is unable to provide the help she deserves to recover from her illness.

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979 Words | 4 Pages

“The Yellow Wall-Paper”: A Look Into Women’s Mental Health The “Yellow Wall-paper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a short story, written in the late nineteenth century that dives into the concept of women’s mental health. The story opens on a colonial mansion where we learn John has brought his wife for the summer in order for her to get well from a “temporary nervous depression- a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 648). The woman is physically isolated, she is not allowed to interact with many people, and she is increasingly isolated from activities that promote productivity and personal identity.

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1480 Words | 6 Pages

Charlotte Gilman’s short story, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, (1899) is a text that describes how suppression of women and their confinement in domestic sphere leads to descend into insanity for escape. The story is written as diary entries of the protagonist, who is living with her husband in an old mansion for the summer. The protagonist, who remains unnamed, is suffering from post-partum depression after the birth of her child and is on ‘rest’ cure by her physician husband. In this paper, I will try to prove that ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ acts as a subversive text by portraying the protagonist’s “descent into madness” as a result of the suppression that women faced in Victorian period.

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1295 Words | 6 Pages

Women in the 1800’ and early 1900’s were treated the same as slaves, second class citizens who had no voice or decision over their lives. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 with a late American 19th century setting. The main character, a nameless woman, fights depression and anxiety along with being oppressed by her husband John and wanting to rise against the norms of

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562 Words | 3 Pages

The reader of this story can tell this woman is not only suffering from insanity, but also loneliness. She often finds herself crying and says, “I cry at nothing, and I cry most of the time.” She attempts to tell her husband how she is feeling but she is unable to, she says “I was crying before I had finished.” (681) the reader can see how this woman is upset and it is not only due to her illness. Infect, the woman makes many comments about how her husband is not reassuring.

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1091 Words | 5 Pages

Gender Inequality: A Woman’s Struggle in “The Yellow Wallpaper” In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman captures the lives of women in a society based on societal expectations during the late nineteenth century. She focuses on the issue of gender inequality where women were often discriminated against and expected to fulfill the role of a perfect wife and mother. The narrator is based on on Gilman’s personal experience of suffering from her treatment for postpartum depression due to the social restrictions on women which represents a reflection on women's social status in society. The narrator, who remains anonymous, is depicted as a depressed and isolated prisoner who is oppressed under her husband’s control and struggles to break free.

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