In the yellow wallpaper, the author is so scattered minded, it keeps you guessing what she will say next. The history behind this text fits perfect with her issues and the Women’s Rights Movement. The author tells you about a woman who has a mental issue and her husband that is her physician. By looking at the difficulty that the narrator has focusing on one topic, we can see that the narrator is not necessarily insane at the beginning of the story but as time progresses the environment seems to make her more insane, which most readers do not see; this is important because it illustrates how her husband is forcing her into a nursery to get better which actually drives her insane. 

In the text, Charlotte Gilman goes from one topic to another giving her audience a wide variety of different paragraphs that explain what she is going through. Although there is a wide variety, she goes off to different topics. “You see he does not believe I am sick!” (Gilman 299)  to “Well, the fourth of July is over!” (Gilman 303) She keeps jumping from negative situations to positive situations that help keep her going and in a good state of mind. “It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so.” (Gilman 305) She is very sure about her husband loving her. She feels secure around him and her illness that she knows for sure she is safe with him. It keeps her going by the fact her is support system because without that, she would go madly insane. “Half the time now I am awfully lazy, and lie down ever so much.” (Gilman 305) By this quote, she is using being lazy and lying down as a result of negative in her life. Not necessarily does she use it as an excuse but to break herself away from what is going on what her. She uses many distractions to make herself feel better in the situation she is in. While distracting herself from her problem, she broadly relies on her husband to help take care of her. She goes on to talk about him one minute taking care of her to him taking her to a nursery to stay in. 

In 1891, Charlotte Gilman published an article called “Why I wrote the Yellow Wallpaper”. In this article she says, “Now the story of the story is this: For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia – and beyond.” In the text “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte tells about the narrator that shares a lot of the similarities with her since Gilman was prescribed “rest cure’, which was being put in bed and staying away from the world. Gilman was being isolated like the narrator to keep her from work, “the normal life of everyone human being.” As Gilman states at the end of her article she intends to not make people seem like they are crazy. “It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.” By this Gilman is stating that she was not trying to make people crazy by reading “The Yellow Wallpaper” but to show you the reality of this type of mental health treatment at the time to show you what woman in that time period had to go through with this diagnosis. 

The narrator feels that solitary confinement is not the best thing for her but to be in a society with people. “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 it always makes me feel bad.” (Gilman 300) It is her husband that forces her to not be in society, not very sure if it is because he is her doctor or just in general a male figure. She believes what he says is right and she should obey him. “He said we came here solely on my account, that I was to have perfect rest and all the air I could get. “Your exercise depends on your strength, my dear,” said he, “and your food somewhat on your appetite; but your air you can absorb all the time.” So we took the nursery at the top of the house.” (Gilman 301) You can see that the narrator goes by what her husband wants. Even with her insaneness, the narrator can suddenly pick out the wallpaper and instantly cannot stand it. She broadly says, “No wonder the children hated! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long.” (Gilman 301) Which shows how the narrators mood can be changed just by looking at the wallpaper. This text revels how the narrator is aware that the wallpaper can affect her psychology. There is a connection between her sanity and her surroundings. “The wallpaper, as I said before, is torn off I spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother—they must have had perseverance as well as hatred.” (Gilman 303) You can tell that the surroundings very much agitate the narrator and that she does not consistently focus on any one thing because her mind is going to two different things at once, “Then the floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here and and there, and this great heavy bed which is all we found in the room, looks as if it had been through the wars.” (Gilman 303) As time seems to go on, the narrator is getting fonder of the room just not the wallpaper. “So I walk a little in the garden or down that lovely lane, sit on the porch under the roses, and lie down up here a good deal. I’m getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper.” (Gilman 304) She is saying the wallpaper still very much annoys her but as time goes on, she is getting use to the room in a way that does not seem to be bad but for instance in a good way. The narrator is starting to convince herself that the room is not as bad as it seemed in the beginning. This is evidence to me that the narrator is kind of just dealing with what is going on but also making her go more insane. We cannot tell that physically but mentally she is slowly dying and convincing herself that the room is good and not bad. In reality she is trying to persuade herself to like this room by still being agitated by the wallpaper but keeping herself in a happy place. 

Therefore, by the ending of this story she has gone completely crazy. The narrator kind of sees her own phycology in a weird way. She starts to see this figure in the wallpaper and is thinking that this figure has took over her life but not really taken over her life. Is this figure real? Can this wallpaper be haunted and to the point making the narrator go all the way insane? The narrator uses these names such as “Jennie” and “Jane” to persuade herself to think this figure is real. “I’ve got at least,” said I, “inspite of you and Jane.” (Gilman 312) She has been in these surroundings for so long that it is literally talking about her insanity because this figure is actually coming off of the wall. She has gotten so use to this environment around her, that it makes he believe there is something actually there. 

In the article, “Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Paula A. Treichler says in, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” “the diagnosis of hysteria or depression, conventional “women’s diseases” of the nineteenth century.” Gilman seems to think the connection of hysteria is forcing the narrator by her husband to stay isolated and away from the world which would physically be better for her. The narrator is supposed to maintain “self-control” by keeping to herself. In reality back then, it was normal for women being diagnosed with mental illness.  
