Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow wallpaper: Plot and Theme Do most short stories that are written provide enough information? Do the stories always get the main idea across to the reader? These questions can be best answered by the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In the short story the narrator and her husband, which is also her doctor, go to a summer home. While they were there she starts to feel as if she is getting sick, but her husband prescribes her the rest cure. While she is in her room she starts to see a women appear in the wallpaper, as this goes on for quite sometime she eventually goes insane. She then tears down the wallpaper only for her husband to find her. After he finds her in her terrible condition he then faints.

In the very beginning of the short story, it starts off by slowly introducing the main protagonists, the narrator and her husband John. The husband and narrator took a summer vacation to a house that the narrator describes as an aristocrat estate and somewhat of a haunted mansion. (Norton) As the story goes on the narrator starts to feel curious about the house and what is all in it. As this situation goes on, it leads into the conversation of her illness. The narrator mentions that she has a nervous depression because she feels as if there is complications in her marriage with her husband John. (Norton) She tells her husband about her illness and how she has been feeling since they arrived at the house, but her husband only makes her feel worse about the situation that includes her illness and her thoughts and concerns in general. (Hochman) The husband then started to get tired of the wife’s complaints and prescribes her the “rest cure.” The rest cure was introduced in the late 1800s and was primarily used to

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was well known for the display of feminism in her writing and the way she displayed it in her everyday life. When Gilman first release her short story it was taken as a horror story and a unique read for most. But as time went on and more research went into her writing it shows much more. (Johnson) In the early 20th century, in marriage women were not considered much of need but were a liability. (Hume) Gilman displayed her thoughts about this through her writing in many of her works, but primarily showed it off in the yellow wallpaper. The story states that this gender difference had the effect of keeping women at that time in a childish state of ignorance and preventing their full potential in life. (Johnson) Thus showing in her writing that, the narrator had no word in any decision that was made even the ones that would affect her, she then retreats into her obsessive fantasy, the only place she can retain some control and exercise the power of her mind. Since she was forced onto that, she then imagined the woman in the wallpaper.