The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” tells the tale of a distraught woman who, when searching for the support of her husband, is met with a patronizing attitude. Throughout the story, more is learned about the metaphor behind the yellow wallpaper and the narrator's internal battle to reach freedom. From a feminist perspective, Gilman’s story details the woman’s struggles and hints at the inequality between men and women as being the underlying cause.
John, the narrator's husband, is introduced as a critical man who openly expresses how foolish he finds his wife’s illness to be. As a physician, he downplays the severity of her situation, by describing her ailment as merely “temporary nervous depression” and it is revealed

The way he delivers his opinions is harsh, like the extremes of comparing her having guests to putting fireworks in her pillowcase. There is an imbalance of equality between John and his wife which is demonstrated by the way he exerts power over her and controls what she is allowed to do. He frequently disregards his wife’s emotions and manipulates her into thinking that she is the cause of her own problems. His seemingly thoughtful nature is merely a mask for his actual cruel, controlling self. An additional way in which the husband believes he knows what is best for his wife is the time he declared he would “send [her] to Weir Mitchell in the fall” if she did not get better hastily (Gilman 589). Weir Mitchell was a doctor who practiced abusive methods, such as electrotherapy, on his female patients in an attempt to cure them. John’s blatant threat to send her there, and his quickness to blame her for not healing faster, are examples of the greater rights men have. He has the ability to send her to a maltreating doctor because men, especially at the time, had overbearing power over women. The imbalance of power between the sexes is evident by John’s actions towards his wife.
The yellow wallpaper acts as a metaphor to further the feministic ideas within this

She feels trapped within her restrictive and manipulative relationship with her husband. The fact that the wallpaper appears as bars only at night is due to how John is only home during that time of day. Whereas, during the day, she feels free from John compared to the imprisoned emotions she experiences when he is around. Later in the story, the narrator describes a woman who “is all the time trying to climb through” the wallpaper but cannot because “it strangles” (Gilman 594). The woman is a metaphor for the narrator herself. She feels like she cannot escape John and all their problems no matter how hard she tries. John’s excess of cruelty and power over the narrator further proves that this is a feminist story about the inequality between men and women. She is worn out and tired of constantly fighting to prove her worth and her emotions to him.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is ultimately a feminist story about the difference between rights and power of men and women. This is proven by John’s controlling nature and the narrators need to escape their relationship as shown through the metaphor of the wallpaper.
Throughout the story, she yearns for support and freedom, but is only met with suppression