By looking at The Yellow Wallpaper in terms of the late 19th century, it is clear that the lack of women’s rights was an issue that was often ignored. This is important to acknowledge because women have worked hard over time to gain equality and rights, but it has not always been that way in the past. Especially in the 19th century, women had very few rights. Since the short story was written in an earlier time period, the issue of women’s rights, or lack thereof, was viewed and dealt with much differently than it is today. Once the reader can understand this issue in a historical and a cultural context, they can better understand the short story and what the narrator is going through. Depression and mental illness is another issue that seems to be prominent throughout the short story and is very important for the reader to understand the historical and cultural context of. The more of an understanding the reader can gain for mental illness and depression, the more of an understanding they can gain for the overall story and the story’s narrator.

In the short story The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator has little control over what she does or where she goes. Her husband, John, is very controlling of her and often belittles her and her illness. As part of her treatment she is not to do any writing, but she believes it would actually be better for her to do so, so she begins keeping a journal and hiding it from her husband. The way the narrator acts around her husband makes it very clear that he has control over her, which was true of a lot of women and their husbands during the time period that The Yellow Wallpaper was written. An article titled “Women’s Liberation: What’s in It for Men?” expands a lot on these ideas and practices that occurred in the late 19th century, when the story was written and takes place. The article talks about how all legal authority rested with a woman’s husband. Women who were married to someone could not own property, they could not enter into any sort of contract, they had no right to their own monetary earnings, they had no parental rights over their own children, and they could not get a divorce. Essentially, women were a man’s property and were equal to his slaves and his cattle. The article helps the reader to better understand the short story and how the narrator lives. It is easy to see that the narrator is mistreated by her husband, but by having the reader expand their knowledge on how women were treated in the late 19th century, it becomes even more clear that the narrator has little control of her own life and whereabouts. Since the narrator spends much of her time alone, she uses a lot of that time to stare at and examine the yellow wallpaper and she begins to notice what she believes is a woman in the sub-pattern. It appears as if the woman is trapped behind bars, which is symbolic of how the narrator’s relationship is with her husband. He has trapped her in the yellow-wallpapered room all by herself and will not let her escape despite her constant asking him to leave the house and walk outside. She becomes even more obsessed with the wallpaper and begins to see the woman in the pattern trying to escape and shaking the bars during the night time, which is a representation of herself and how she feels about being trapped by her own husband, who she is starting to despise. It is hard for one to fathom a man treating his wife the way John does if it were happening in present times. Unfortunately, this sort of treatment was not too uncommon for the period in time the short The Yellow Wallpaper is taking place. The article previously mentioned talks about how in the 19th century, a bride was required by law to obey her husband. Many women nowadays would attempt to escape a relationship such as the one between the narrator in John, but after reading this article the reader can understand and make the connection that if the narrator had attempted escape, she would have actually been breaking the law. 

In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is suffering from depression. Her husband belittles her illness and as stated before, has complete control over her and keeps her in the one yellow-wallpapered room. The image of the woman trapped in the wallpaper not only represents the narrator being trapped by her overbearing and abusive husband, but also is symbolic of her feelings. People who are depressed often feel as if they are trapped in their own minds and cannot escape no matter how hard they try. As discussed in the article “Adolescent Depression: Stressful Interpersonal Contexts and Risk for Recurrence”, depression, especially in women, is often a response to stressful events or circumstances. An unhealthy romantic relationship is also said to be a common cause. In fact, a woman is twice as likely to develop depression if she is involved in a controlling or an abusive relationship, just like the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper. Arguably, the narrator’s source of depression could be the circumstance of her relationship with her husband. The author never actually reveals enough information to the reader for one to determine whether the husband was abusive because of the narrator’s illness, or if the narrator’s illness formed because of the abusive relationship. However, since husbands being dominant over their wives was a common practice in the 19th century, it is quite likely that this behavior could have caused an unwell mental state for the narrator. The article also talks about how the more these stressful situations occur, the more likely the depression can become a vicious cycle. Being trapped in a room all day forced to do nothing but sit and stare at a wall can easily make any person, ill or not, go insane. The narrator’s mental health really continues to diminish as the story goes on and she starts to lose her mind. She even begins to see what she believes is people that are trapped behind cage bars inside the wallpaper. Her living conditions are not suitable for anyone, especially someone in her sort of mental state, so being alone all the time only made her go even more insane than she already seemed to be. People who suffer from depression need treatment and to be surrounded by people rather than be isolated in a room all alone and away from any social contact. It is extremely important for the reader to understand depression and how a person suffering from depression functions, because having that background knowledge will help to develop a deeper understanding of the short story. Without any sort of background knowledge on depression, the reader will not be able understand as well the severity of the narrator’s mental condition and the extent to which her husband is mistreating her and her illness. 

It is important for the reader to understand mental illness and the lack of women’s rights in a historical and cultural context when reading the short story. The information that the reader gains from learning more about these issues serves as a great source of background information when reading The Yellow Wallpaper. It is easier to understand the narrator and what exactly she is going through being a mentally ill woman in the late 19th century. When gaining background knowledge on the subjects and taking it into historical and cultural contexts, the reader can see how few rights and freedoms women seemed to have at this point in time, and how women can be affected by depression and mental illnesses. 
