Feminist Perspective In The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written in 1892, is a short story told from the perspective of a woman believed to be “crazy”. The narrator believes her craziness to be a form of sickness. However, the narrator’s husband, John, believes her to be suffering from a temporary nervous depression. As the narrator’s condition worsens, she begins to see a woman moving from behind the yellow wallpaper in her (WC) bedroom. The wallpaper captures the narrator’s attention and, as a result, drives her mad. Gilman incorporates a lot of personal experiences into the short story. Through Gilman’s feminist views and her personal opinions, “The Yellow Wallpaper” becomes a short story written from a feminist and semi-autobiographical standpoint.

Gilman puts a plethora of her own experiences into her short story. Lillian S. Robinson is a feminist activist and professor of women’s studies that found Gilman’s writings so intriguing that she wrote multiple journals and essays about Charlotte Gilman. In one of Robinson’s journals she stated that (established source), just like in Gilman’s short story, Gilman was given rules to follow during her state of depression. Gilman “was never to write or paint again, and she was never to read for more than two hours a day” (Robinson 5). This experience obviously gave inspiration to why the narrator is not allowed to write; “he hates to have me write a word” (Gilman 210) the narrator shared. Gilman also described her personal “bed rest cure” (Robinson 5) she had to go through in her story. Gilman was put into “extended bed rest to be followed by a return to working as a wife and mother” (Robinson 5). This experience is seen throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper” when the narrator’s husband continuously makes the narrator go to sleep, “ I lie down ever so much now. John says it is good for me, and to sleep all I can” (Gilman 216). John does not allow the narrator to work or even see her family; instead the narrator is forced to walk about the house and sleep. She is defeated to the point that she listens to whatever she is told and always obeys her husband. The personal experiences that Charlotte went through during

By being written in this manner, the story is only seen from the perspective of the narrator. First person narrative skews the reader to believe what the narrator is saying is true, when in reality the readers do not know the whole story. This narration leaves the reader questioning what is believable and what is not based on what the narrator shares. A first person narration forces the reader to base his or her understanding of characters and plot on what is learned through the narrator. Because of this ambiguity, it allows for the reader to interpret Gilman’s short story differently and make his or her own assumptions about the narrator’s