Imagine yourself a woman in the late 19th or early 20th century. You know there is something wrong with you because you constantly feel tired and sad, and your physician husband thinks he knows how to fix your problem, but in reality he’s just making you worse. You are told to stay in bed and rest even though you know going out and getting some fresh air would be much better for you, but your opinion is not respected enough to be met with anything but a laugh. You are, in essence, treated with the autonomy of a small child. This is the situation in which the narrator of Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” finds herself. In the late 1800’s, women had little to no rights, and certainly very little autonomy. From this fact stems the cultural importance of “The Yellow Wallpaper” because not only was Gilman commenting on the attrocious mental health care of the time, she also took this opportunity to speak up on a topic that barely even crossed the minds of most people of the day: the rights of women. By Looking at Gilman’s use of an unnamed first person female narrator, we can see her commentary on women’s place in her society as she sees it, which most readers don’t see; this is important because it was unheard of at this time for a woman to speak up and basically call out an entire society for its treatment of a group. 

“So I take phosphates and phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do?” (Gilman, 300). This quote from “The Yellow Wallpaper” is very important because it exemplifies the exact place that Gilman saw women in her society, summed up by that last sentence “but what is one to do?” Deep down, Gilman’s anonymous narrator knows that the “treatment” she is undergoing is doing her no good, and if anything is making her worse, but the stigma in her society against her even speaking up or offering an opinion over what is best for her is so strong that she resigns to there being no point. In the late 19th century, when “The Yellow Wallpaper” takes place, the rights and representation of women was abysmal. Husbands had legal power over and responsibility for their wives to the extent that they could imprison or beat them with impunity (CITE NWHP.ORG). As such, it should come as little surprise that it is completely historically accurate for Gilman’s character to have undergone increasingly damaging “treatments” without speaking up because she had been taught her whole life to do the exact opposite. In fact, doing so could have resulted in her being commited to a mad house or worse as was seen in Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad House. Furthermore, women at this time were barred from even pursuing higher education to begin with, so even if she had spoken up for herself, anything Gilman’s character might have said would have been regarded as foolish and uneducated; it was automatically assumed that women bore the intellect of a child. Throughout the short story, Gilman’s use of an anonymous first-person narrator makes the reader feel connected on a deeper level to the character as she decends from a healthy but depressed woman into a seriously mentally ill one, all due to the “treatments” that were meant to help her. Gilman’s criticism of her society’s treatment of women is blatently obvious through the decline of her protagonist, completely preventable were it not for the numerous social constructs mounted against her, so much so that even voicing her own opinion would be a difficult feat. 

“I suppose John never was nervous in his life. He laughs at me so about this wallpaper!...He said that after the wallpaper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows… But he is right enough about the windows and things.”           (Gilman, 302). This quote, too, sheds light on how Gilman saw her society’s treatment of women. Not only does he shrug off his wife’s severe obsession over this menial thing, an actual sign of mental illness, but to defy him could likely find the narrator in a worse position than she was already in, and so she acquiesces with a simple “he is right.” As a reader, we really don’t even need to wonder if this is another commentary by Gilman on the lack of womens autonomy, exemplified by the learned submissiveness exhibited in this quote, because she once said so herself. “[Gilman] was in fact driven to near madness and later claimed to have written “The Yellow Wallpaper” to protest this treatment of women like herself, and specifically to address Dr. Weir Mitchell with a propaganda piece” (CITE LONESTAR.EDU). This only adds to the validity of Gilman’s commentary because it isn’t just heresay, but this is story is based off of events personal to her. She experienced the same thing that her fictional narrator underwent, and lived to tell the tale. Gilman was a role model for all women of her time in that she took herself out of this cycle of abuse in the form of a divorce, a very scandalous and frowned upon decision in the public eye in the late 19th century. She would end up remarrying to her first cousin, except this time lived out her days happy and with a voice for herself. (CITE RADCLIFFE.HARVARD.EDU). 

Gilman’s use of the anonymous first person narrator effectively conveys her commentary on the unacceptable treatment of women in the early 19th century. As radical and taboo as it was for a woman to speak out against the social constructs of the day, Gilman did so with tact and wit. While regarded as little more than a horror story at its time of publishing, and if anything was taken at face value as a protest against medical practices of the day, Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” has since become a staple in many an english classroom, specifically those with a focus in feminism and the women’s rights movement. To be a married woman in the late 19th century essentially meant to be a slave, privy to the wants, needs, and decisions of one’s husband. This was the common practice of the day, ingrained into the minds and very beings of every man and woman born into it. Were it not for the efforts of brave, outspoken women such as Gilman, this may have remained the case up until even today for all we know. What we do know, however, is that due to the very same audacity that was criticized upon it’s occurance, the world is in a better place than had Gilman stuck to the status quo and kept her head down. 
