The yellow wallpaper

A Critical Analysis of Formal Elements in the Short Story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

When asked the question of why she chose to write 'The Yellow Wallpaper', Charlotte Perkins Gilman claimed that experiences in her own life dealing with a nervous condition, then termed 'melancholia', had prompted her to write the short story as a means to try and save other people from a similar fate. Although she may have suffered from a similar condition to the narrator of her illuminating short story, Gilman's story cannot be coined merely a tale of insanity. Insanity is the vehicle for Gilman's larger comment on the atrocities of social conformity. The main character of "The Yellow Wallpaper" comes to recognize the inhumanity in society's treatment of women, and in her

The "Yellow Wall Paper "by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a chilling study and experiment of mental disorder in nineteenth century. This is a story of a miserable wife, a young woman in anguish, stress surrounding her in the walls of her bedroom and under the control of her husband doctor, who had given her the treatment of isolation and rest. This short story vividly reflects both a woman in torment and oppression as well as a woman struggling for self expression. The setting of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the driving force in the story because it is the main factor that caused the narrator to go insane.

Through a woman's perspective of assumed insanity, Charlotte Perkins Gilman comments on the role of the female in the late nineteenth century society in relation to her male counterpart in her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." Gilman uses her own experience with mental instability to show the lack of power that women wielded in shaping the course of their psychological treatment. Further she uses vivid and horrific imagery to draw on the imagination of the reader to conceive the terrors within the mind of the psychologically wounded.

The woman behind this work of literature portrays the role of women in the society during that period of time. "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a well written story describing a woman who suffers from insanity and how she struggles to express her own thoughts and feelings. The author uses her own experience to criticize male domination of women during the nineteenth century. Although the story was written fifty years ago, "The Yellow Wallpaper" still brings a clear message how powerless women were during that time.

The essay, "Why I wrote the Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was written primarily for the purpose of explaining the meaning and reasoning behind her semi-autobiographical short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper". Before stating these reasons, Gilman explains that she had been suffering from a "severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia--and beyond" (Gilman, 1913). After three years of this torment, she decided to go see a specialist in nervous diseases. The doctor she went to was named Dr. S. Weir Mitchell. Dr. Mitchell advised Gilman to be put to bed and to apply the rest cure, along with living a domestic life with limited amount of intellectual interaction and to never "touch pen, brush, or pencil again" (Gilman, 1913). As intimidating as this sounded, Gilman took the advise of her doctor, and followed his every suggestion for about three months. She had reached a point of almost complete mental ruin at the end of these three months, that she had to cast aside the specialist's advice. Instead of following his instructions, she began to work again. Ultimately, this is when and where "The Yellow Wallpaper" was written.

In her story, The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman expresses exasperation towards the separate male and female roles expected of her society, and the evident repressed rights of a woman versus the active duties of a man. The story depicts the methods taken to cure a woman of her psychological state during Gilman’s time, and delineates the dominant cure of the time period, “the resting cure,” which encouraged the restraint of the imagination ("The Yellow Wallpaper: Looking Beyond the Boundaries") Gilman uses the unnamed narrator to represent the average repressed woman of her time and how her needs were neglected in an attempt to mark a fixed distinction between the standards and expectations of men and women. John, the narrator’s husband, take the designated and patriarchal role of a man who believes he knows everything there is to know about the human mind. His belief of his superior knowledge pushes him to condescend, overshadow, and misunderstand his wife. As a result, his wife loses control of her life and escapes into her own fantasy world, where she is able dominate her imagination, free her mind, and fall into insanity. Gilman describes her era’s approach toward female psychology in order to criticize the patriarchal society she lived in as well as to reveal its effects on the women of her time.

In the grips of depression and the restrictions prescribed by her physician husband a woman struggles with maintaining her sanity and purpose. As a new mother and a writer, and she is denied the responsibility and intellectual stimulation of these elements in her life as part of her rest cure. Her world is reduced to prison-like enforcement on her diet, exercise, sleep and intellectual activities until she is "well again". As she gives in to the restrictions and falls deeper into depression, she focuses on the wallpaper and slides towards insanity. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story written from a first-person perspective about a young woman's mental deterioration during the 1800's and

In literature, women are often depicted as weak, compliant, and inferior to men. The nineteenth century was a time period where women were repressed and controlled by their husband and other male figures. Charlotte Gilman, wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper," showing her disagreement with the limitations that society placed on women during the nineteenth century. According to Edsitement, the story is based on an event in Gilman’s life. Gilman suffered from depression, and she went to see a physician name, Silas Weir Mitchell. He prescribed the rest cure, which then drove her into insanity. She then rebelled against his advice, and moved to California to continue writing. She then wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which is inflated version of her

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," is the disheartening tale of a woman suffering from postpartum depression. Set during the late 1890s, the story shows the mental and emotional results of the typical "rest cure" prescribed during that era and the narrator’s reaction to this course of treatment. It would appear that Gilman was writing about her own anguish as she herself underwent such a treatment with Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell in 1887, just two years after the birth of her daughter Katherine. The rest cure that the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" describes is very close to what Gilman herself experienced; therefore, the story can be read as reflecting the feelings of women like herself who suffered through

"The Yellow Wallpaper," is a larger-than-life version of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s own personal experiences. She grieved for several years in depression, as her physician diagnosed her with “neurasthenia” and prescribed the "rest cure" seen in the story. Unable to write or seek company, Gilman's rest drove her insane for three months. Gilman wrote the story not simply to change one man's view of neurasthenia, but to utilize the floor as a symbol of the oppression of women in a patriarchal society as mentioned in her article “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper”.

After learning of Gilman’s personal story, it becomes apparent that “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and the struggle of its narrator, carries a distinct message. Gilman grew up in an unhappy and impoverished family with a brother, a single mother, and no father figure. She later went on to marry Charles Stetson (whom she later divorced) and had a daughter with him. After the birth of her daughter, Gilman fell into a deeply depressed state, indicating the relevance of postpartum depression. When she consulted Dr. Weir Mitchell about it, she was prescribed a “rest cure.” It was this event that inspired Gilman to write “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and many similarities can be drawn between

Elaine R. Hedges wrote the first critique of "The Yellow Wallpaper" in 1973 that brought the story back into popularity. Her critique focuses on the biographical approach. Hedges points out that this story is strong and unique compared to Gilman's other work, which she claims suffered from rushed deadlines (Hedges 105). Gilman's breakdown after the birth of her daughter and the disillusionment she felt at her lack of choices were the inspiration for "The Yellow Wallpaper." Her own father's abandonment and mother's detachment also contributed to the underlying theme of the story.

Gilman wrote her short story, The Yellow Wallpaper in 1892 after undergoing S. Weir Mitchell’s, a popular neurologist of the 19th century, “rest cure” treatment where she was to “live a domestic life as possible” (Perkins. 4). Through her short story Perkins utilizes gothic fiction, a type of horror fiction, to vocalize her private and personal traumatic experience so that no other woman would have to. The format of the story is written from the perspective of a woman with an unnamed nervous condition, who writes a collection of journal entries to record her daily thoughts, while she is being treated for her

In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman creates a character of a young depressed woman, on the road to a rural area with her husband, so that she can be away from writing, which appears to have a negative effect on her psychological state. Lanser says her husband “heads a litany of benevolent prescriptions that keep the narrator infantilized, immobilized, and bored literally out of her mind. Reading or writing herself upon the wallpaper allows the narrator to escape her husband’s sentence and to achieve the limited freedom of madness which constitutes a kind of sanity in the face of the insanity of male dominance” (432). In the story both theme and point of view connect and combine to establish a powerful picture of an almost prison-type of treatment for conquering depression. In the story, Jane battles with male domination, because she is informed by both her husband and brother countless brain shattering things about her own condition that she does not agree with. She makes every effort to become independent, and she desires to escape from the burdens of that domination. The Yellow Wallpaper is written from the character’s point of view in a structure similar to a diary, which explains her time spent in her home. The house is huge and old with annoying yellow wallpaper in the bedroom. The character thinks that there is a woman behind bars in the design of the wallpaper. She devotes a great deal of her