Women In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

Gilman wrote the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” in 1890, it’s believed that this short story was an autobiography of her own life. “She was also concerned at a young age with issues of social inequality and the circumscribed role of women” (Mike Lukasik, ed., Literature: Erie Community College En 102-Writing in the Humanities. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2013, copyright). During the course of the story, Gilman identifies several roles for women that serve to the dominance of the male society, and place them in impossible circumstances in which madness is the only possible course of action. Through her marriage to Charles Stetson, Gilman experienced severe depression and underwent a series of unusual treatments. In The “Yellow Wallpaper”, the reader see’s the point of view through the narrator’s journal entries. It is a story of a woman suffering from depression, Jane, confined by her doctor-husband in an old mansion upstairs in a room which was once a nursery with barred windows and a bolted-down bed to the floor. Forbidden to do work, treated with “rest

With this said, the reader might view that John wants to hide his wife’s mental state from society because of the fact he is a high standing physician he requires merit to his reputation. He assumes that she is intentionally choosing not to get well and return to the domestic and maternal duties expected of her. Jane repeats references to John’s orders in the first section of the story highlights the patriarchal nature of their relationship. Its, “Believed to be intellectually inferior, passive, and domestically inclined by nature, women are expected to live their lives according to such traits” (Quawas, R. (2006). A New Women’s Journey into Insanity: DESCENT AND RETURN IN THE YELLOW WALLPAPER. AUMLA: Journal Of The Australasian University Of Modern Language Association, (105),