Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper “written by Charlotte Perkins Gillman is a phycological and feminist masterpiece. Gillman a women’s right activist, mother, wife, and writer lived in a time where women were kept in a position that prevented them from existing outside one’s home life. Women were subjugated and degraded during this time, and this inequality and prison like conditions created the feeling of trapped or confined in one’s own family often leading to mental breakdown or illness. This subjection of women led Charlotte Perkins Gillman to the conclusion that women were being hindered from having both intelligent and creative growth. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is an informative piece that discusses the teaching of mental illness in the course "Women

Also, keep in mind that during this time (late 1800’s) that women who suffered any kind of mental illness was often given no medical help, instead often being prescribed a “Rest Cure”; which is a period in which a patient will do absolutely nothing. Doctors used to believe that the non-stimulation of the brain would help and aid in its recovery, like how a “Rest Cure” was prescribed to the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper. The room our narrator stayed in shares many similarities to a prison, having solid colored wallpaper, bars on the windows, and told not to move read or write (our narrators favorite hobbies). This is one of the first signs of oppression that will be shown throughout the short story. The narrators husband John, who is a doctor, recommends that his wife does nothing to stimulate her brain such, as writing; and when the narrator tries to convey to the John that distractions will help, her opinion is simply ignored. This displays how in marriages the woman can often feel as though her opinion doesn’t matter or that her voice is not heard in the relationship, proven when the Gilman writes “I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition” (Gilman 2). This can apply stress or strain to women and will often cause them to keep to themselves just as the narrator did when she kept her hidden journal and secretly wrote in it and her true feelings about her mental situation and her relationship with her husband, descriptions of the room she is in (most noticeably the yellow wallpaper), and records of things that are going on around her. The journal is an escape for the narrator and is used to make her feel less trapped or oppressed in her current