Life as a woman in the 19th century United States was a life dominated by the control of the men of the time. With very limited rights, women were primarily under the control of men and were forced to abide by their rules. Men didn’t seem to understand normal female bodily functions and they became seen as symptoms of hysteria in the eyes of men. Symptoms as simple as faintness or nervousness could cause men to diagnose a woman with hysteria or insanity and even submit them into an asylum for professional “help”. The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is inspired by such patriarchal societal actions in the late 19th century to show how the men diagnosed many women with mental illnesses such as hysteria and insanity and subjected them to mental asylums because they showed symptoms of things that are relatively normal bodily functions

The most obvious example of male dominance in this story is the husband, John’s, control over his wife which is reflective of the time period and this same dominance in many households throughout the United States. John does not take his wife’s wants and needs seriously an merely dismisses what she says most of the time. The wife states her concerns for the house they are to buy, but “John laughs at [her], of course, but one expects that in marriage.”(Gilman 299). The wife in this scenario just accepts the dismissal of her husband just like woman across the United States during the 19th century. “In ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ the physician is the quintessential man, and his talk, therefore, is the epitome of male discourse”(Ford 310), and this unwarranted authority over his wife is emulated in most relationships during at the time because the woman were forced to accept this submissive role. Even her own brother, who is also a physician believes the same thing, so the woman is being controlled by not just her husband, but other male figures too. On another occasion the wife tells her husband that she doesn’t like there room and would rather have one downstairs, “But John would not hear of it.”(Gilman 300). Once again she is immediately denied by the authority of her husband. Then again when she wants the wallpaper removed and changed in her room because it makes her nervous, but “He laughs at [her] about this wallpaper!”(Gilman 302). Time and time again, John denies and laughs at his wife when she wants or request something and it seems as if she is just his possession which he allows to have no opinion. 

This patriarchal society caused the men to view any questionable behavior from woman as some sort of mental illness. In this short story, the author sets it up so that the husband has his wife pent up in his own sort of make shift asylum, isolated from the rest of the world. “Important life decisions including admittance to an asylum were decided by a husband, brother, or male friend. Occasionally, men’s societal expectations of how women should act did not coincide with how some women acted.”(Pouba 95), as is the case in “The Yellow Wallpaper” with the male figures controlling what the wife does. The wife believes that if she were to do the exact opposite of what her husband says, then she’d be better off, but she still goes along with his guidance. The wife says, “I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus-but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad.”(Gilman 300), which shows how controlled she is and how her “condition” created by her husband is the thing that actually makes her feel bad. His unwillingness to ever listen to what she has to say is reflective of the time period and other similar cases of woman being told they have a mental illness of hysteria or insanity.

The wife’s forced isolation at the hands of her husband is what causes her to slip into actual insanity. At the beginning of the story all she wants to do is see other people and be active, but her husband denies every activity she wants to do. She enjoys writing and using her imagination frequently, but just like everything else, her husband doesn’t allow her to indulge in such things because he thinks it will help her. “[She] did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal- having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.”(Gilman 300). She wasn’t even allowed to write because her husband thought she need to rest, but by blocking her ability to write, he tired her out because she must sneak around him in order to what she likes. Instead of being able to do simple things like writing and interact with other people, she became forced to focus on the things in front of her. She becomes fascinated with the wallpaper around the room and build an unhealthy obsession with it as it’s one of the few things she is forced to stare at all day every day. The author of this short story is trying to show the world what happens when men try to limit the minds of women. She is telling the story of thousands of women who, at the time, are told they are insane by men, and forced into unneeded treatment. “Not only were the symptoms controversial according to today’s practices, but the diagnoses resulting from the symptoms were also only during this time period.”(Pouba 95). The wife’s husband even threatens to send her to an actual institution if her condition that she doesn’t even have doesn’t get better. Her isolation forces her to become obsessed with the wallpaper that surrounds her. She begins to see a woman who she thinks is trapped in the wallpaper and she even relates to her as she is stuck inside the room longer and longer. Being labeled as mentally ill by the male figures in her life, the wife actually develops the insanity that they were trying to heal her of. As they are about to leave the house, the husband comes into the room to find her completely insane and believing she is part of the wallpaper. When he sees her, he faints and she says “Now why should he have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time!”(Gilman 312). This last quote is ironic for a few reasons. One reason, is that he finds that after trying to heal his wife from her “insanity”, he actually forced her into becoming insane. Also, fainting is one of the symptoms that could get a woman diagnosed as insane and submitted into a mental hospital. 

As a feminist in the late 19th century, the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes “The Yellow Wallpaper” in order to tell the story of women across the United States who are forced into mental hospitals because their male counterparts label them as mentally insane. The men see symptoms that are normal to both woman and men such as nervousness and insomnia and diagnose them with hysteria or as insane. The men during the time viewed women as their possessions and they were able to control them and decide for themselves what were normal behaviors which led to the suffering of thousands of women throughout the United States.
