
The idea of gender inequality is one very familiar to those caught up in today’s society. The fight for equal rights has been a tough fight, however progress is being made. Progression doesn’t happen quickly, it takes time and dedication. The fight for equal rights began many years ago through brave women, especially authors, who tried to breakthrough their constrained world. Many argue that Charlotte Perkins Gilman and her writing did not benefit the future of women’s equality. However, through her writing of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, she became a stepping stone in the feminist movement. 

Charlotte Perkins Gilman lived a very difficult life. She was forced to overcome multiple life obstacles that shaped her later writing. As a child, her father left her mother and due to the gender roles then, the family was penniless without him. Her education was compromised because of the constant relocation of her family. She taught herself how to read at the age of 5, but finished her educational career by the age of 15. Soon after, she married Charles Walter Stetson and had a daughter with him. Right after Katharine’s delivery, she suffered from suicidal post-partum depression. She later found the courage divorced her husband and moved across the country, which was quite the feminist act. After sending Katharine back to live with her father, she became romantically involved with Houghton Gilman, her first cousin. She remained married to him with little problems until his death, and then she was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. Unfortunately, she took her life with an overdose of chloroform, because she believed that dying from chloroform was better than dying from the cancer (Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Making of a Radical Feminist). Throughout her life, she became an incredible symbol of feminism due to her literary work during her rough periods. 

Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” was rumored to be semi-autobiography and with knowledge of her background story, it can be proven. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is about a woman unable to accomplish her wifely responsibilities, like care for her child, due to her supposed mental illness. The main character’s husband locks her away in an old English style house, and programs into her mind that she should be resting and not thinking or writing. Through Gilman’s figurative language, it is very clear that there is a distinct difference between man and woman. Part of the aspect of disregarding women’s rights, is the mistreatment of the main character’s legitimate mental illness. In “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wall-Paper” Gilman is often quoted for saying that “for many years I suffered from a sever and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia—and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with the solemn advice to ‘live as domestic a life as far as possible,’ to ‘have but two hours’ intellectual life a day,’ and ‘never to touch pen, brush or pencil again as long as I lived.’” Throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the main character hints multiple times to her creative mind being oppressed. Like the male doctor said, Gilman shouldn’t be writing at all. In the story, John, the physician husband, has trained his sister to take care of the domestic side of their life in that house, which means he trained her on the rules as well. The main character saw John’s sister and immediately thought, “I must not let her find me writing. She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick! But I can write when she is out…” There is so much male control in that household, that John influenced the thoughts of not only his wife, but his sister. He also tells his wife that she mustn’t let her ideas spiral out of control, which directly correlates to what Gilman was told by the mental illness specialist and it is apparent that in the story, John doesn’t really believe that his wife is sick (Managing Madness in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper”). 

Another issue that was transparent in Gilman’s life and in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, is the dependence on one gender. Gilman was extremely unhappy with her first marriage, especially after she had her first child. She transferred her post-partum depression due to her child in her character in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The main character claims that she “cannot be with him [her child].” Not only because John is withholding him, but because she feels nervous around the child. Gilman was unable to maintain her marriage with her first husband and took a stand by moving across the country. That was one of her many feminist actions, because the idea of divorce was very much frowned upon. When Gilman’s mother was left by her husband, she was left with no money because of her gender. By being strong enough to leave her husband, Gilman became “a face of the early feminist movement, arguing incisively for female economic independence (Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Making of a Radical Feminist).” The way Gilman depicted the gender roles in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is that of a father and child. She portrayed women as such helpless creatures like when the main character was gathered up in “[John’s] arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read to me till it tired my head.” Gilman is either describing how she felt during the time she was sick or making fun of the way that society thought the two genders interacted. 

Gilman’s life and life’s work truly awakened eyes of those closet feminists around her. Without her foot in the movement, women would be so much less independent and strong as they are today. If Gilman was aware of the fact that the United States has a possibility of being governed by a woman, she would be proud. Gilman is commended for acknowledging the truth about society and putting her hardships into words in order to set those who aren’t able to, free. The women in 2016 should be thanking Gilman for the progression that’s been made over the past one hundred years, because she really was a stepping stone in gender equality.
