By looking at women’s rights and mental illness in the terms of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman we are able to see what a women and mental ill person faced in 1980’s. to be a woman in these time periods was changing enough but to suffer from mental ill as well was an ugly reality for the narrator in the yellow wallpaper. The another of the story was mental ill like the narrator. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s a women had little say over husband or any man. The historic context in the yellow wall paper is the rights a women or did not have during this time and the lack an information on mental illness. 

The text is written in first person from the mentally ill narrator, allowing the readers the understand the narrators thinking. The text is in the style of a secrete journal the narrator keeps from her husband and the people looking after her. The reader in able to pick up on the element of fear the narrator has for her husband who is a physician who is treating the narrator. She states “perhaps (I would not say it to a living sole, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind) perhaps that is one reason I do not get well fast” this shows the reader how she is too scared to tell her husband how she feels (299 Gilman). This is important because it foreshadows how the narrator sees her husband/doctor. In the 1890’s this was the common relationship between a husband and wife so the narrate does not see the problem that a reader currently would. In the 1890’s married women worked, three-quarters of women in the work force are single. The narrator says she is “absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again” this is an example of the lies her husband tells her, even if she was mentally stable the narrator would more than likely not been allowed to work outside the home being a married woman (300 Gilman). This element creates irony because the modern day reader would know this but the narrator is unaware of the gender roles this is the normal for then. This is also an example of understanding the historical different from the 1890’s when the yellow wallpaper was written to now.

The narrator at first seems to be in denial about where she is and the nontraditional her husband has with her even for that time pointed. she believes she is at a summer home for vacation and will be leaving at the end of summer.  But the reader can see as she goes on that she truly believes everything she writes. The room at husband puts her in is not the one she wants. The readers know why he would not allow to be on the first floor with a door to the outside, because she is mentally ill and needs to be somewhere they can keep her. She describes the wallpaper in her room as “dull enough the confuse the eye in the following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study” this gives the reader an insight on how much the wallpaper gets to her the first time she sees it (301Gilman).  

During the time that the Yellow Wallpaper was written little was known about mental illness long with how one should be treated. “Until the 19th century, people with mental illness were cared for by family members, who quietly attended to their needs in rural areas” this is how the narrator was treated, her sister-in-law, Janine helped take care of her while he husband was away (Hotlyman). This is an examples of one of the historical connections in the Yellow wallpaper.  It helps the reader see that this is the way people saw mental illness in the 1980’s. While she was away at the summer home she undergoes a common treatment for that called “rest cure”. The treatment limited a patient to very little to no physical exercise and limited mental stimulation. This would make a sane person go ill not be able to do anything but lay in bed till they were “cured”. The same treatment was used the another Charlotte Gilman when she was ill. 

While the narrator’s mental illness progresses throughout the story to the pointe of her having a mental breakdown, readers are able to see the historical connections between the text and then time it was written. 