In an article published in 1913, "Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper?", Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes, "for many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia" (1). In about her third year of suffering, she sought out the help of a nationally renowned specialist in nervous diseases, whose advice amounted to not much more than limiting "intellectual activity" and not working (Gilman 1). This, in turn, drove Gilman much closer to the point of madness until spawning, in 1892, her story "The Yellow Wallpaper." Gilman's article eradicates any doubt as to what the real issue behind her story is. Her literature, as well as her contemporaries', centers around the oppressive domesticity that constituted the role of women in the late 19th century and their desire to break free from it.

In that time, literature was flooded with advice on how to be a "proper woman" in middle class society. However, within the endless arrays of articles and columns, there existed writers such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin. Their work, as well as that of many others, often touched on themes such as imprisonment, escape, and freedom. In fact, the climax in Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" is when, a while after hearing of her husband's death, the main character has a revelation of sorts and the words that come out of her mouth are nothing more than, "free, free, free!" (Chopin 1). In "The Yellow Wallpaper", as well, the women the protagonist sees hidden in the walls seem to represent the entirety of womankind rattling their cages, trying to get out. In the end, one could even say that the protagonist loses her own sanity in her quest to do the exact same thing.

This caging, so to speak, of women in their homes was less despite the increasing social and economic shifts taking place --  due to urbanization, industrialization, etc. -- , and more because of them. Men were working increasingly longer hours and, according to the experts of the time, the role of the home was growing more and more important (*). This, of course, meant that the woman had to put in every possible effort into maintaining such a space unpolluted. That is not to say that Gilman, or any other woman, blamed or hated their husbands, families or homes; in fact, in "The Story of an Hour", Chopin says that, despite the joy at being "freed", the main character will still mourn he whose face never looked "save with love upon her". Her elation, indeed, does not come from the absence of the man but of that which he represents. After all, it is not specifically their husbands who they feel oppressed by, but society itself. 

Another topic that "The Yellow Wallpaper" touches on is, of course, that of mental illness. It is the more obvious of its themes and also what critics seemed to have reacted to upon its initial release.  Gilman writes about its reception in "Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper?". She states, "When the story first came out in the New England Magazine about 1891, a Boston physician made protest in The Transcript. Such a story ought not to be written, he said; it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it." (1). To this, Gilman replies that "[it] was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked" (1). 

Even though Charlotte Perkins Gilman herself said to have written the story as a way to condemn medical practices such as the one that nearly caused her to lose her mind, her history suggests that the second meaning wasn't that far behind. Granted, she did not "see herself as a ( ... ) feminist, but as a social scientist and a humanist", Jane Purvis points out in her article about Judith Allen's study, "The Feminism of Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Sexualities, Histories, Progressivism"; yet, she came to be "regarded as the most significant Western feminist theorist of her days" (Purvis 1). It is not very difficult to find threads of her ideals woven intricately into any of her work, including "The Yellow Wallpaper".

Returning to the author's reply to her critic in "Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper?", she uses the world 'people' instead of 'women', however, while doubtless some men afflicted with neurasthenia were subjected to what she was, it is hard to believe that doctors gave many men the order to not think or work. The idea borders on absurd. Treatment of men and women were hardly similar in many fields and they were most probably even further apart in that of mental health. For example, in "The Yellow Wallpaper," the protagonist is treated as a child, especially by her doctor husband. He calls her "little girl" and "blessed little goose" (Gilman 1), he is condescending, and the treatment she receives from him throughout the story is that of an infant. Seeing how the story is supposed to be a heavily fictionalized version of Gilman's own experiences, it wouldn't be too far of a reach to suppose that the husband character's behavior stemmed from her realization that she was not taken seriously in her daily life or by professionals when concerning her mental health. 

In her article, Gilman also mentions that a woman she knew was saved from the same "remedy" she'd been prescribed after her family read "The Yellow Wallpaper." It is therefore clear that such occurrences were not entirely uncommon, a fact that leads back to our thesis. 

Susan S. Lanser interprets Gilman's story, in her "Feminist Criticism", as a two dimensional uprising against patriarchy. The first dimension is that of the story's main character, who she sees as a representation of woman under patriarchal oppression. This character, then, shatters her oppressors by tearing the wallpaper, somewhat losing her mind, and making her husband- who, in this theory, serves as the main tangible antagonist- faint from shock. This interpretation shifts the point of view from one marginalized group, the neurovariant, to another, women. 

The second dimension is that of the author, herself. Lanser brings up several instances of men fighting against "The Yellow Wallpaper" being spread; "I could not forgive myself if I made others as miserable as I have made myself!" the editor of the Atlantic Monthly is quoted saying (Lanser 417). William Dean Howells, who reprinted Gilman's story in 1920, called it "terrible", "too wholly dire", and "too terribly good to be printed" (417). She then points out that "[feminists] could argue convincingly that Gilman's contemporaries, schooled on the "terrible" and "wholly dire" tales of Poe, were surely balking at something more particular: the "graphic" representation of "raving lunacy" in a middle-class mother and wife that revealed the rage of the woman on a pedestal" (417-418). 

It would seem that that is the only difference between the horror these particular authors inspire, one does so by way of driving male characters insane, and the other does so by driving her female characters insane. When looking at them objectively, one could even say Poe's stories are much darker and more sinister seeing as how they, more often than not, involve death and its relatives. However, as Lanser points out, men seemed to be less terrified by those and much more affected by the portrayal of a woman broken free from the expectations the society of the time had for her, the least of which was having an imagination, or brain, active enough to drive herself mad.

All in all, despite the fact that, for the first fifty years after its publishing, "The Yellow Wallpaper" remained mostly buried or hailed only because of its chilling depiction of neurosis, it was finally reinterpreted by participants of the feminist movement, who saw a much deeper message in it that resonated with their own cause. Ultimately, it was Gilman herself who said that she did not regard her writing as art but as a sort of lecture with further significance and purpose in educating whoever comes upon it. Her work, as well as that of her colleagues, is clearly heavily influenced by the oppressive system under which they, as women, were forced to live and fight against. 

