Mental Degradation In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wall

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wall-Paper draws her audience into a woman’s mental degradation in order to discuss the faults in current treatment for mental distress and the overarching treatment of women at the time. Her husband is her physician, allowing their interactions to be interpreted as both gender based and medically based. Within the story, the narrator is fixated on the wall paper of her bedroom and it leads to an extended analogy for the women and the cultural rules women must follow. The identity of the narrator is never revealed, likely to elicit additional empathy and maintain that the story is not necessarily unique to a single woman. By never naming her narrator, Gilman is opening the possibility that the story could

Her position is dismissed and treated as false without room to defend herself and her creditability is stripped away. All symptoms aside, the narrator is pinned in without hope. Then with a smile and a kiss, autonomy is deemed too great a responsibility, “He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction. I have a schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely ungrateful not to value it more.” From this statement, she seems to believe that her natural response to reject captivity is quite the opposite of how she should react. Society has embedded within her the idea that she does not know herself as a woman, nor should she question the orders she receives. Free will and mental stimulation are stolen yet the narrator feels the need to be grateful for being a victim. Her husband and physician is placed in a position of power above her that she is struggling adhere