The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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Over time, the character started to have a paranoid attitude with the hideous wallpaper, she begins to see figures in the wallpaper, like a woman’s figure trapped behind the pattern of the wallpaper, she becomes more preoccupied about it and feels like she should help to free the woman trapped behind. Originally, the shadows of many things started to appear to her as the woman behind the wallpaper. She claims to see her in the garden “on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines.” She imagines the woman behind the wallpaper being able to escape in daylights and trapped at nights. The fact that she imagines the woman being able to escape during daylight seems more like a reflection of her own desires to go outside during the day, to explore her garden even though she will have to hide for people not to see her. The hallucination becomes stronger each day and so are her needs to explode to tell her feelings, to go walking around as she pleases, and not being trapped behind the wall of her bedroom. She hallucinates about seeing the woman trapped behind the wallpaper bars and no matter how hard she tries to, she simply can’t escape so is the protagonist because she feels like she’s trap in the house and she fighting herself to get out. Many of us think that we have to say, or feel, or be something other than what we are. We say things that we don't mean, thinking that it is what others want to hear. We pretend to feel things that seem acceptable to others so that others will approve of us. The protagonist was saying things that she knows her husband, her step sister wanted to hear because she didn’t want them to believe that she was going insane. She would pretend to... ... middle of paper ... ...ique and different in our own way. Only we can define ourselves be who want to be. One might believe that “The Yellow Wallpaper” is easily about a woman pushed to insanity by post-partum depression and continually isolation, but it is so much more than that. It’s about human rights, it’s about a woman fighting to find her identity, to be considered as an individual, be her own self and express herself the way she feels like it’s healthy for. Sometimes our relatives, family might think they know exactly what is best for us, but how can they be so sure if they don’t see things in the same point of view as us. Harvey Fierstein once said “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life, but define yourself.” And the point is what is best for someone is not usually what is best for you. Only you can be you.

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