
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a story filled with such amazing historical context, and it is one where readers can barely believe what happens. The story resembles the views of a woman in the Victorian Era, which was a huge part of our history when it came to feminism in our country. There were many different beliefs regarding women, and they still float around today. The main character tries to keep herself as calm as possible throughout the story, even though she is living in a room that is a little creepy. It smells bad, it does not look very clean, and, of course, it contains the interesting yellow wallpaper that she absolutely despised. The historical context behind “The Yellow Wallpaper” is very interesting because of the many views of women in the Victorian Era, and it portrays the main character’s appearance and actions at a high level.

I believe that the main issue in the historical background refers to the feminism of women in the past decades. In 1837, the Victorian Era began, and before this period, women were not being treated as fair in many people’s eyes. Some women were ignored and abandoned. Some women were bullied or threatened by somebody else. Even today, some of these things happen in the world, and it is a shame that it does still happen. Also, some people “equate class status with readiness for democracy” (Lanser 430). This means that some women are viewed as highly intelligent if they are extremely wealthy. Other women are not viewed as highly superior if they are in a lower class compared to everyone else. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” it is clear that this woman was not respected very well in society because first of all, she was alone in the room. She did not have anyone else with her in the whole story, and she had to have been bullied or neglected at least once in her life because she was having some panic attacks and crazy moments as she was in the creepy room. The criticism of women is definitely a factor in the historical elements of this story.

The woman in the story was also placed on a rest cure, and this is extremely important throughout. She had many physical issues involving her brain that involved delusional stress and anxiety, which made her seem even more creepy. She was taken to the country by her husband John, and since he was a doctor, he understood that the only way that she could possibly break away from her crazy world would be to receive total rest, which is a condition that can only result with the emptiness of the mind. She always attempted to rebel against the rest cure because she was insisting that it was “making her more ill” (Kinkead 75), but her husband insisted that the “doctor knows best” (Kinkead 75). The problem was that she had no idea of the condition that she was in at the time, and she was completely lost on numerous things in the story. When she starts to look at the wallpaper and sees a figure that also looks like a human being, that is the icing on the cake when it comes to the fear of this woman. It just totally showed that she had completely lost it. This is a historical reference to “The Yellow Wallpaper” because rest cures used to be a popular solution to solving emotional problems, especially with women. It could have been any sort of depression or anger that could have triggered the possibility of having to go through a rest cure. The psychological condition that the woman was in is not only important, but it was also extremely creepy.

At the end of the century, some people tend to forget the amount of work a woman puts into everything that she does, but especially for the things outside of the home. The woman in this story is like a woman in the Victorian era, and Victorian women were “over-sexed because of the limited options open to them” (Kinkead 76). This means that people sometimes just do not stop and think of the many opportunities that women especially have in life. This has definitely changed throughout the past couple of decades. The working class for women used to be very different from what it is today, and most people do not stop to realize the challenges for women in the past and today. If the woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” did not have the condition that she was suffering through the story, then she would be a very hard worker. It would be almost impossible to find a woman in the Victorian Era as creepy and delusional as the main character in this story. As a whole, women were definitely pushed a lot more a few decades ago, and this is a huge historical reference to “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

This story was really good not just because of the plot, but also because of many historical references that it had to offer throughout the text. Once the historical background if figured out, the story starts to make much more sense than it ever did the first few times. Whenever a story is read, I will always try to find some bit of history that goes along with either a section or the entire passage that symbolizes what the story is about. This is extremely helpful in determining the juice that each story has to offer, but it just does not come out at you. You have to figure it out using a deep mind and many resources. 
