The idea of gender inequality is one very familiar to those aware of what is going on in today’s society. The fight for equal rights has been tough; however, progress is being made. Progression may seem like it happens quickly, but it actually takes a lot of time and dedication. However, the fight began many years ago through brave women, especially authors, who tried to breakthrough their male constrained world. Many argue that Charlotte Perkins Gilman and her writing do not benefit the future of women’s equality. Nevertheless, through her writing of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” she becomes a stepping stone in the feminist movement. 

Gilman lived a very difficult life. She was forced to overcome multiple life obstacles that shaped her later writing. As a child, her father abandoned her family. He left his children and spouse penniless, because at the time women were not given rights to land or work. Ultimately, it was her father who provided for the family and when he left, their lifestyle suffered. The constant relocation of Gilman’s family compromised her education. She taught herself how to read at the age of five but finished her educational career by the age of fifteen. 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 to divorce her husband and move 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. For example, her suicide alone was the strong act of a feminist. After receiving the news of her approaching death, she felt as if she might as well die now instead of waiting for something to slowly kill her. For once in her life, she wanted to be in control. 

Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is rumored to be a 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 enforces her to rest, rather than think and write. 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 states:

 for many years I suffered from a severe 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.’ (1)

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, somehow forces his sister to take care of the domesticity of the household as well as the care for his wife’s condition. The main character sees John’s sister and immediately thinks, “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…” (303). There is so much male control in that household, that John influences the thoughts of not only his wife but also 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 (302). Gilman was unable to maintain her marriage with her first husband and took a stand by moving across the country. That is one of her many feminist actions, because the idea of divorce was very much frowned upon. When Gilman’s mother was deserted 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). Gilman specifically depicts the gender roles in “The Yellow Wallpaper” through the relationship of a father and child. She portrays 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” (305). 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 her literary work truly awakened the eyes of those closet feminists around her. Without her foot in the movement, women would be much less independent and not as strong as they are today. If Gilman were aware of the possibility that the United States could soon be governed by a woman as the President, she would be proud. Gilman is commended for acknowledging the truth about society and putting her hardships into stories, to hopefully set the other women in similar positions free. The women in 2016 should be thanking Gilman for the progression that has been made over the past one hundred years because she really was a stepping-stone in gender equality.
