In the late 19th century America, women did not have the same rights that women have in the present day. During that time, women mostly had no say and would have to listen to what a man would tell them. The time period of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is set decades before women’s suffrage came and gave women the right to vote. By living in the Victorian era, women were treated badly and could be sent to mental asylums for going against what a man says. The reason that this short story was written was because this was a call to society that women should be able to have a more important role in American society. By looking at the culture during the late 19th century, we can see the struggles that women face on a daily basis, and this is important because the feminist movement in America would begin and would in turn help women gain more rights in the coming decades.

In the short story the “The Yellow Wallpaper” a major theme is the role of women in society and in marriage. Throughout the story, the narrator is confined to her new house and she is not allowed to leave, even after she continues to plead with her husband to leave before the lease for their rental house is over. In another instance, the narrator wanted to go visit her cousins, but John said that “I wasn't able to go” (Gilman 5).  During the late 19th century, women in America were often controlled by their husbands and had little freedom to do what they wanted to do. Also, in this short story, the narrator’s husband was her doctor and wouldn’t help her with her mental illness. Throughout the story, her husband, John, would dominate their marriage and would never listen to how she felt. Therefore, the narrator would right in her secret journal because “I must say what I feel and think in some way - it is such a relief” (Gilman 5). While her husband John would try to treat her depression by making her stay inside the house and rest. John treats her like a case and because their relationship is unequal, she can’t tell john how she feels and her depression becomes worse until she snaps.

Another theme in this story is how women in the Victorian era is how women in this era show how men would stifle women’s creativity. In the short story, the narrator became fixated with the yellow wallpaper. As time goes on, she becomes more disassociated with her day to day life and as that happens, she begins to write in her secret diary. The narrator is a very creative person as she is imaginative and refers back to childhood when she would imagine people on the sidewalk or when she was a child, she would image monsters in her room as a child. She writes in her journal because John would stifle her imagination. Because this was the only way she could express herself, she became depressed and would not speak out against John, which made her depression become worse. During this time, women could be sent to asylums for being an “inconvenient or embarrassing” (Wallace). For this reason, that is why she starts to become more depressed and can’t speak out against how John is trying to treat her illness. She writes in her secret diary that she loves John and knows that he is trying to help her, but the treatment is not working.

The third theme of this short story is the gender. In this story gender is a big factor that relates to the Victorian era because women during this time were not supposed to get jobs, but stay at home and sit around all day. Because she was a woman in this time period, she had to be obedient to her husband because that was the social norm since women had almost no rights compared to the rights that men had. That is seen through the text because the narrator is confined to her house and not allowed to go out. In the story, she becomes depressed and her husband, John, who is also a doctor, tells her to rest and lay around the house all day. As time goes on, the narrator begins to see the yellow wallpaper’s outside pattern looks like bars in a prison. She sees that the outside of the yellow wallpaper looks like prison bars, because she is a prisoner in her own house and because John is making her stay inside the house because he is trying to treat her illness with rest. As she stays inside the house longer, she starts to become mad. The way that John tries to treat his wife makes her feel like a prisoner in her own house and John doesn’t know this because he doesn’t listen to his wife and that’s why she writes in her secret journal.

The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written, not as a horror story like some people think, but as a call to feminist for change in the roles that women have in society. As she wrote this during the Victorian era, she wanted social change because of the struggles that women would have to go through on a day to day basis. People who read this short story now can understand that this is “a call for women as a universal text of women's struggles against the patriarchal structures that constrict them, casting the narrator as a heroine who chooses to become mad rather than assume her proper place in the patriarchal order” (Nadkarn). Many of the struggles that women faced from society during this time was that didn’t have the same rights as men when they were married. This was shown in the text because the John would never listen to how his wife felt and that’s why she would write in her secret diary, so she could have and a temporary escape from her life. Also, during this time, it was uncommon for women to have jobs and in the text, the yellow wallpaper made the house feel like a prison and with the combination of not being allowed to go outside, so John could treat her illness, she became mad at the end of the story. By writing this short story, Charlotte Perkins Gilman tried to show society the struggles that women faced during the Victorian era.
