       

 If you were kept sheltered in a room with nothing to look at but a hideous wallpaper and the outside world through barred windows, wouldn’t you go mad too? In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” she emphasizes the oppression upon women when it came to mental illnesses. The narrator of the story lets us live through her experiences of this predicament through her journal entries. The story describes the narrator's, who may or may not be named Jane, descent into madness when her doctor husband diagnoses her with “temporary nervous depression- a slight hysterical tendency”, a diagnosis common to women in that period, after the birth of their child. He decides the best cure to this ailment is bed rest, which went against her own beliefs of what would cure the condition. The room that caused her to feel exactly the opposite of what it was supposed to, unrestful. Eventually, her under stimulation leads to her descent into psychosis, and an obsession with the yellow wallpaper that covered her room. Charlotte Perkins Gilman helps illustrate the oppression that women faced in the 1900s patriarchal society through her use of personal experience, diction and the underlying metaphor within the yellow wallpaper, and by doing so inevitably creates one of the most well-known pieces of feminist literature.

In the 19th century, women were being oppressed in several ways. Male doctors continued to find ways to do this through the mental health of women. The history of this is imperative to our story because in this day in age, she would’ve been treated much differently. In the story, our narrator claims on multiple occasions that she knew what was best for her health. For instance, she stated, “personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change would do me good. But what is one to do?” (Gilman).  This was the case for many other women in her time as well. During Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s time period, doctors such as S. Weir Mitchell and George Beard studied the condition of temporary nervous tendency, or neurasthenia. They believed that this condition was “strongly linked to educated, middle-class women” and theorized that “too much stress, over-education or lack of exercise” could permanently damage a woman’s nervous system (Nespor).  This was one way that men subjugated women who were educated and could possibly be a threat to them. It was imperative to men that women would stay in the house and perform the household duties. Another way that men kept women in the house was by creating negative health reasons that women would experience due to riding their bikes. Those symptoms included heart palpitations, insomnia, exhaustion depression, and bicycle face which was “an ailment caused by the awkward expression cyclists get while riding” (All Day). It is important to understand the history of women with mental illnesses during this time period because it helps us understand that the narrator was inevitably driven to madness by her husband’s false diagnosis.  If we did not know this, or did not know what time period the story took place in the reader could be led to believe 

that the narrator was just in denial about her illness, but instead we see the progress she makes from being just nervously depressed, to actually delusional. 

In addition to the events that occurred within the mental illnesses of other women in that time, it is important to the story that we understand the author’s mental illness. Charlotte Perkins Gilman lived a life that closely resembles the one of our narrator. She drew from different things in her own life. For example, her hysteria after giving childbirth, the fact that she was not supposed to write in her journal, and most importantly the fact that she was sentenced to bed rest. The doctors believed that going home and living “as domestic a life as possible” (Nespor) would be the best treatment. This is probably the most important historic event to understand for this short story. It is important because the information is coming first hand from the author’s experiences, and can be taken with much credibility. If the reader were to not know the author’s background, it would be hard to find this a believable story.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman also uses symbolism and metaphor to convey her message of male dominance and female submission that circumscribes the narrator in the story. It is undeniable that the most vital part of the this story is the wallpaper itself. The narrator states that the wallpaper has a confusing pattern that she cannot follow no matter how hard she tries. It is 

certainly not a coincidence that the woman in the wallpaper is trapped behind a ludicrous pattern. Gilman uses the design to symbolize the societal norms as types of patterns that metaphorically confine the actions of women. Furthermore, the wallpaper can be used as a symbol for domesticity, and the hideous smell and shade help to symbolize the character’s “illness”.  The woman that the narrator imagines she sees trapped behind a pattern symbolizes all women who are confined by societal norms in the patriarchal society. At the end of the story, she frees all of 

the women who are trapped by ripping off all the wallpaper. In doing so, she frees herself from her insane thoughts that conflicted her. Without the understanding of the time period that this story took place in, the underlying metaphor that lies within the yellow wallpaper could have been perceived differently. For instance, if this took place in 2016, when women’s oppression wasn’t nearly as bad as it was 100 years ago, we might take the paper to mean something entirely different.

It is important to understand the time period and non-feminist culture that took place within the 1900s when our story took place. Charlotte Perkins Gilman illustrated the wrongdoings that women faced when it came to mental health through, the history of women's oppression during the time period of the story, drawing from her own personal health experiences, and using the wallpaper as something to symbolize the confinement of women during this era. Without the knowledge of the events and diagnoses that occurred in Gilman’s time period, and understanding what she went through as a woman, we would not be able to understand the short story as a whole. “The Yellow Wallpaper” helps women around the world better appreciate where we stand in society today.
