
The Yellow Wallpaper stands out as a short story that has many ways of interpreting what happens. Charlotte Perkins uses different ways of storytelling to be able to tell make her story have different meaning to those who read it in order to allow the reader to gleam a better understanding of what they are reading and understand what women went through during the late 1800s. Charlotte Perkins’ tale of peculiarity and maybe even insanity stands as a window into her time period, one that anyone today can read and garner a better understanding of how the world worked over 100 years ago. During this time, women were subjected to being called insane in many cases that were untrue. “Other reasons to be "put away"(in the insane asylums), were depression, alcoholism, just being a little different from the norm, and even going through menopause!” (Sansone, 2016) Perkins paints a picture of how this treatment can lead to insanity.

In order for one to be able to comprehend different elucidations of Stetson’s story, first one must understand the setting of the tale. During the 1800s, women in the west were treated dramatically different than today. The idea of mental health and someone being labeled as insane are called into question also. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, while mental health specialists knew a little bit about the subject of insanity, they used the label on women for almost anything they did that was out of the ordinary. Katherine Pouba and Ashley Tianen describe this phenomenon in their paper “Lunacy in the 19th Century: Women’s Admission to Asylums in United States of America”. Pouba and Tianen describe “Women were deemed insane in cases such as a woman who experienced delusions uncontrollable fits of laughter without cause the feeling of being inclined to do mischief and a tendency to use abusive language toward others. For example, Patient 1351 was admitted after going to her neighbor’s and using abusive language. One symptom was depression after the death of a loved one” (Pouba and Tienen, 2016). Although today these diagnoses are seen as bizarre and completely unnecessary, during the late 1800s and early 1900s, men considered their wives or other women in their lives as insane simply because of happenings such as mourning too long. Once one understands that society saw women in this light, it is easy to see how John could consider his wife unstable for small reasons. 

In The Yellow Wallpaper, John (a physician) believes that his wife is not healthy mentally and unable to live normally. The reader is not able to see exactly what is wrong with John’s wife or why she is being treated this way, the reader does learn that Jane (the wife) has just recently experienced childbirth (Stetson 1892). Jane’s recent childbirth definitely has something to do with her illness, there is no other reason it would be mentioned like it is. During the course of the story, the reader is allowed to watch as Jane goes from mentally stable to an extremely strange and questionably insane state. The reader watches as Jane is not allowed to leave her room and must try to sleep all day and not express herself. In today’s society, the idea of someone sleeping all day and never leaving their room would be universally seen as unhealthy. Regardless of this, John believes stalwartly that his wife is very sick and must never read, write, or interact with new people; John believes that all of those could elicit his wife’s unstable mental health. Because of this, he spends the entire story warning his wife not to even think about things other than rest. It appears he is completely convinced that rest and doing nothing is the best strategy for his wife to return to normal. One theory about John’s attempt to “help” Jane is the idea that John wants only to pretend that Jane is not in a good state of mind to convince her that she is crazy. John could have many intentions in this, he could want to get her sent away, this can be seen when Jane mentions that her husband has mentioned sending her away to Weir Mitchell (Stetson, 1892). While there is no blatantly apparent reason as to why John would want to send his wife away, a reason could be conjectured; John could want to leave his wife, or he could simply just be an evil man wanting to drive his wife up the wall. Either way, Stetson expresses the story in a way that seems as if John is trying to convince his wife that she is crazy and make something out of nothing. This is evident in the fact that Perkins never makes a point to mention the “events” that lead up John considering her crazy. Before Jane begins writing about women being inside the wallpaper she does not seem crazy at all, she seems like a regular mild-mannered woman that believes something is wrong with her. Because the reader does not learn of Jane’s prior actions leading up to the story, one cannot tell whether she is sound of mind completely. A skeptic to this theory would say that the audience never learns of the events leading up to The Yellow Wallpaper, and only reads the words of Jane at certain times. She could be erratic and strange more like she is at the end of the story frequently, and her scratching the wallpaper off was not a terribly strange thing for her to do. This idea is bolstered by the fact that when John faints in front of her, she is not surprised at all. Fainting could be something that John does frequently when he sees his wife preforming some erratic behavior. Because of this, it makes more sense for Jane to be crazy or at least not completely right in the head. It is evident that Perkins wrote the story in a way that it could be interpreted both ways.

One of the symbols that stands out in The Yellow Wallpaper is the rope that Jane uses to make sure that she does not fall into the wall. It is strange that she finds and uses a rope in the house considering her past in mental health. It is also strange that Stetson chooses to include this and makes a point of referencing it. Ropes are a symbol for death because many people choose to end their lives by using a noose. Stetson references Jane going and finding a rope because after she brings the rope to her room, her life as a sane human being is over. Jane dies and the women that is inside of the wallpaper is born. The rope also signifies the safety that Jane wants, this is seen when she ties the rope around herself to not fall inside. Out of the two ways to identify this symbol, the first requires one to dig deeper and think about the short story in less of a literal sense and more of an emblematic way. In the beginning of the story Jane is normal and, while she pays attention to the wallpaper, she does not do anything to change it or engage in any strange behavior because of it. When Jane picks up the rope and ties it to herself she is killing her sanity in pursuit of what she thinks is inside of the wall. This happens because Jane genuinely believes in the things that her mind is making up. It can be said that the point where she kills her sanity is the point that John’s “treatment” really works.  

One of the important things to realize when reading stories like The Yellow Wallpaper is that human sanity can be extremely fragile. When women were treated as if they were insane and told they were crazy constantly because of small or different issues, it convinced many of them that they were not stable and did belong in institutions. The root of the problem was how women were treated back then, and the role that they played in society. “Women during this time period had minimal rights, even concerning their own mental health…. ‘It must be admitted then, that there are causes acting unfavorably upon the chances of insanity among women, the existence of which may be said to be native to the sex’ (Tuke, 1864, p. 149)” (Pouba, Tianen, 2006). The authors of that piece express the fact that the problem of misjudged insanity was cause almost entirely by the fact that women were treated as second class citizens, they could not make their own decisions, especially not when it came to their mental health. The symbol of the rope was added in The Yellow Wallpaper to show that Jane (a typical women) had been thrown into insanity because of the “treatment” that her husband applied to her. The theory that John was trying to convince his wife that she was crazy on purpose also come into play here; If John was making his wife worse on purpose, then he was simply using the system already put in place by the men of that time. If John thought he was helping his wife, he was still part of the problem by not believing his wife or listening to her as a real human being and simply if she was not healthy. In conclusion, Charlotte Perkins shows the extent of what men could do to women completely legal and good in the eyes of society in the late 1800s.
