Oppression In The Yellow Wallpaper

One’s own mind can be seen as either a hiding place or refuge. It is a place where someone could hide and not be bothered by the outside world. As a patient in a mental hospital who has had a traumatizing experience or an unfortunate happening, they find refuge in the safety of their own mind, which doesn’t allow their soul to project their true self. In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman one can see that the narrator looked a down upon as to be kept at a lesser level than the males which ends up driving her mentally insane in the long run. This can be seen when the males in the story constantly believe that they know better than women, the authors own experience, and how the narrator goes along with what they say even though

This resembles a modern day prisoner in a jail cell. She is told not to do anything but rest. This type of isolation and cutting off of the senses will no doubt drive any person mad. The room it self is a metaphor for a jail. And the so-called “cure” is actually a punishment. There is a type of torture that happens when a subject is put into a white room. No windows, no sound. They where white clothes, and given white meals. This sense deprivation leads to hallucinations, anxiety and even auditory voice phenomenon. This is what happened to the narrator. The only way she was able to could cope was writing in her journal. Although she still wasn’t able to maintain control. She started to dwell in the only place she could escape to: the inner depths of her mind. She starts to look at the wallpaper. She sees a woman. There is a woman who is trapped in the wallpaper. The stripes were as bars of a jail cell. She needs to get her out! She needs to get “herself” out! Down comes the wallpaper in many different shapes and sizes. Ripped, pulled, torn off the wall in a frantic fit of rage and passion. “The figure of the narrator-protagonist reflects Gilman 's own intensely conflicted relation to reading, including her painful inability to read at all during the period of emotional upheaval on which the story is based” (Hochman). “Perkins Gilman did an exquisite job of breathing a realistic insanity into her main

“She suffered a near nervous breakdown after the birth of her first child, leading her to author “The Yellow Wallpaper”, an intense short story about a woman’s treatment during a nervous breakdown. Sadly, her nervous breakdown led to divorce and leaving her daughter in the custody of her ex-husband. Turning to writing as a way of earning money, Gilman eventually found herself as a spokesperson regarding “women’s perspectives on work and family” (My postpartum voice). In this way she was able to turn a complete bad situation around and turn it into a profitable thing. “In 1887, Perkins Gilman sought treatment for continuous nervous breakdown from the best-known nervous specialist in the country” (My postpartum voice). She was told about the rest cure. The rest cure is literally nothing. One is to lye down and rest it off. That seems ok for a headache or even the flu but postpartum