“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a short story about a young woman and her husband renting a charming secluded residence for the summer.  The narrator’s husband is a licensed physician and says that she suffers from “temporary nervous depression” (300 Gilman). He says in order for her to be cured all she can do is rest, so he picks an airy room on the top floor for them to stay in. He orders her to stay in there and do pretty much nothing with her life. She’s unhappy with the room he chose as well as the orders he has given her, but she decides to obey. Her husband has forbidden her to do anything she enjoys and told her to stay inside this room, so all she can do is become fantasized with the wallpaper. The narrator comes to the realization that she is who is trapped inside the wallpaper and that she must let herself escape. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s reasoning for writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” can be explained by the roles women took on in the 19th century and the lack of respect women received from any men, especially their spouses, leading them to become crazy in their own minds until it gets to the point where all they have left to do is to try escape who they have become.

In the 19th Century women were considered weak and domestic. They did not receive much respect from anyone, especially men. In this time period men were known as the powerful and ambitious ones.   Hume stated that in the 19th century, “Lower-class women were known as servants, upper-class women could help, sometimes, but not normally, with a business within the family or a local business owned by a friend, but typically, according to society and the norms back then were to be in the home doing household chores and taking care of their family” (4 Hume). Some women may have been educated, but that was not normal. If they were they could only read or write if it did not interfere with any of there in home chores. If a woman picked up a serious hobby it was seen as harmful to her family because she was not doing what, according to men, she was supposed to. Karen Ford explained in, Managing Madness in Gilman's “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, that “Physicians of the 19th Century believed that if women gained too much knowledge it would only lead them to become mad” (311 Ford). Woman and men were experiencing the idea of “separate spheres” during this time. Meaning, they only entered each other’s spheres for nightly dinners with their families. We can believe that the narrator is from the upper class because she does not have to do much. However, she does not like this. She is ill and trapped inside a tiny room causing her to put her effort into something which happens to be the notorious yellow wallpaper. Gilman’s use of the wallpaper eating away at her was a symbol for the way she has to live eating away at her. She has to do something about it. She has to somehow make something of herself astray from the typical woman in the 19th century as well as the woman her husband has caused her to become. Gilman was trying to show readers that the way women were seen then was unacceptable and the way she conveyed this message was by disguising women as the yellow wallpaper, allowing women to take a stand against men when they escaped the wallpaper. 

Obviously, women were not seen with much importance at this time and this made the way men treated them even worse. Karen Ford explained in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Women's Discourse that, “men had all the power” (313 Ford), so no matter what they would always trump any opinion a woman may have had, they would always win. Veeder explained that, due to woman not having many rights at all, men were able to reign over them with no harmful feeling. Men simply were more focused on what they had the power to do and making it known they had the power to do it (51 Veeder). In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator’s husband, John, had all the power in the home. Not only was he her husband, but also her doctor. She had no way of telling him that she did not agree with him or that she was unhappy with the way he was making her live. The narrator was stuck living inside his bubble. Karen Ford explains that in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, “The word but is used 56 times in this short space as well as numerous other words all supposed to mean ‘but’ as well.” She explains that the narrator is interrupted every time she speaks and ends up being the one to interrupt herself. All of the narrator’s craziness was triggered by the way she was treated by her husband and that so much anger built up inside her mind that she became physically and mentally ill. Her husband is the primary cause of her craziness as well as her uncontrolled obsession with the wallpaper; he is in control of her sanity. It is almost as if he knows what he is doing to his wife, but allows it to happen and allows her to go mad as long as he was in control. Gilman wanted to show readers that the way women were put off and portrayed as weak in the 19th century was leading them to craziness and something had to be done if women were ever going to escape the constraints men had put on them to become a happier individual. Gilman used the wallpaper to show their breakthrough and that all women needed to somehow reach this breakthrough to become independent. 

The narrarator was forced into this crazy ill human being because of her husband and the way he treated her. Gilman wanted to use the two of them as an example of all women and men in the 19th century. Apart from the wallpaper, the window is also a symbol that represents all that she could be as well as her entrapment. She says, "I don't like to look out of the windows even, there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast” (311 Gilman). She is unable to look out of the window because she sees all the women that have to sneak to fit into society just like her and she realizes that they are only a representation of who she has become. The room she is living in and the little characteristics of that room, the most significant one being the yellow wall-paper which Ford would say, “plays a double role” (313 Ford): having the ability to trap her inside with its complex pattern that lead her to a very unpleasant frame of mind. It also gave her the ability to break free. The narrator talks about the wallpaper as if it is the worst thing she could ever look at "the color is repellant, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sun"(301 Ford). She becomes so consumed in the intricate patterns of the wallpaper that she tries to understand them until she can find where they meet. This is when she finally allows herself to be invested in her fantasies forgetting anything that her husband has made her do and allowing herself to begin to be free. John, her husband, tells her she must not listen to her thoughts, but she refuses and does so anyway. The way she becomes aware of what is happening to her is a sign of bravery that women from the 19th century did not typically demonstrate. This is when she realizes that the pattern in the wallpaper is not another woman, but that it is a splitting image of herself as well as all the other women from the 19th century who are trapped behind societies constraints. Gilman wanted women to realize that they have all the capabilities of escaping all along they just needed to let themselves go and realize what is happening around them. Slowly but surely all women would be able to make something of themselves and stand up to the way men were treating them as well as escaping their own ill mind they have been trapped in for so long. 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s reasoning for writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” can be explained by the roles women took on in the 19th century and the lack of respect women received from any men, especially their spouses, leading them to become crazy in their own minds until it gets to the point where all they have left to do is to try escape who they have become. In the 19th Century women were considered weak and domestic. Due to women being seen with not much importance at this time, the way men treated them especially horrible. This forcing them to become insane within their own minds. I believe Gilman’s goal was to show everyone, especially women, what they were capable and they were not to sell themselves short of everything they were worthy of. Gilman published this story in 1892 and had no idea this would still be a very influential feminist story in 2016. She created something that all women, old and young, can look back on and live by for the rest of their lives. She showed women that they were more than a housewife; that they deserved the world and that someday all women would receive the world if they realized what was happening around them and stopped it.  
