Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

Gilman had lived a life of activism against the societal norms of women after she divorced her first husband who had been psychologically abusing her. She had to endure many things throughout her life that had caused her to lose her faith in men. Gilman’s father had left her family estranged at infancy, allowing her family to suffer through hard times in the Victorian era; luckily her aunts were prominent suffragist Isabella Beecher Hooker and author Harriet Beecher Stow. During her unloving marriage, she had developed postpartum depression, similar to the narrator she was told to undergo a “rest-cure”. A rest-cure was basically a duration of time where a housewife would just focus on her domestic life rather than seek real treatment or distractions

Most of the story’s action takes place in a room at the top of the house that is referred to as the “nursery.” The room is covered in yellow wallpaper which has scratch marks and there are bars that are attached to the windows. The narrator becomes fixated on the wallpaper believing that there is a figure hidden behind it. The figure resembles the shape of a woman and begins to haunt her every waking thought. A possible theory could be that the woman that’s stuck behind the wallpaper is the narrator herself as she has her mental breakdown; she seems to represent the narrator’s own sense of being oppressed. The tearing down of the wallpaper is symbolic of the tearing down gender roles and finally appreciating oneself, being free. On the subject of symbolism, the house that she is temporarily staying in is a representation of her marriage. The house is described as beautiful and nice on the outside but sinister on the inside. “It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer. A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity—but that would be asking too much of fate! Still I will proudly declare that there is something queer

The story reveals that this gender division had the effect of keeping women in a childish state of mind and preventing their full development. She suffers a mental breakdown.The narrator is similarly trapped like the mysterious figure, desperate to escape the grasp of her sickness but also the grasp of the society, and her husband who represents that traditional society, that has forced her into this room because of its views of women and mental illness. “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candle light, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be (Gilman).” John’s assumption of his own superior wisdom and maturity leads him to misjudge, patronize, and dominate his wife, all in the name of “helping” her. The narrator is reduced to acting like a child, unable to stand up for herself without seeming unreasonable. The narrator has no say in even the details of her life, thus causing her to develop an obsessive nature, the only place she can have some control and exercise the power of her