"The Yellow Wallpaper"

Ever felt like a fly on the wall? Imagine feeling stuck inside the wall. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes about a woman going through postpartum depression. The narrator has a child and begins to experience symptoms of postpartum depression that lead to the nanny taking care of the child. Her husband perscripes her medication which eventually leads to her madness. The narrator is going through postpartum depression shown by sexism, the woman in the wall, and an attempted suicide.

In the story, women are viewed as weak and fragile especially from doctors. The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is based on the author’s life. Gilmore was treated unfairly by doctors because she was a women, “Gilman’s main purpose in writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” is to condemn not only a specific medical treatment but also misogynistic principals and resulting sexual policies that make such a treatment possible” (Gilman). It presents that the author wanted to show how some medical treatments are chauvinist and they are sometimes based off of unscientific beliefs. Gilman shows this in her writing, “But John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self control; so I take pains to control myself-before him, at least, and that makes me very tired." Her husband is telling her to not take proper care of herself. He also prescribes her medication that just makes her feel worse. The author wrote this story in an attempt to get people to see how denying a woman full humanity is dangerous, especially if you are a doctor.

In other ways than the sexism of the time period, the apparent woman in the wall also leads to the narrator’s madness. The narrator is seeing women move in the wallpaper which is only just her imagination. The more she stares at it, the more alive it comes; Gilman writes, “I wonder if they all come out that wallpaper as I did?” (Gilman). With each passing day, the narrator’s psychosis deepens, causing her to see the woman more vividly. Slowly, she finds herself relating with her hallucination: “The narrator betrays the progression of her illness when she begins to believe that the figure behind the wallpaper is a woman, trapped like herself,” (Hudcock). The narrator is seeing things that are not there, which are contributing to her madness.

The final reason is the attempted suicide. The narrator’s child was taken care of by a nanny and she was not able to see it as much as she would like. She was considered to be “sick” therefore John thought she could not take care of her own child which led to her believing that the only way to cure her pain was to simply kill herself, “At the end story’s conclusion, the narrator locks herself in her room and ties a rope around her waist so that she cannot be removed” (Barth). This quote shows how the narrator chose to kill herself. It states how the rope cannot be removed so she suicide would work; Gilman writes, “I have locked the door and thrown the key down onto the front path” (Gilman). She does not want to be removed to she can follow through with suicide. Suicide is an effect of mothers getting their child ripped from them. Not being able to see her child started a chain of events which ended in attempted suicide.

Some may say how “The Yellow Wallpaper” is not about a woman going through postpartum depression. One may say how it is maybe about the wallpaper is her mind and she is stripping it away with mediation her husband provides for her and convinces her she needs. Barth wrote here to explain the underlying message of the story. “... accepting the separation from her infant, [the narrator] slowly loses control of her imagination and her motivation to seek human contact” (Barth). This blatantly says how not being able to see her infant mad her go mad. It is clear that the story is about a woman going through postpartum depression.

The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is woman going through postpartum depression and the sexism of doctors and society, the wallpaper in her room and her suicide attempt are all factors that prove it. Everyone goes through challenges and traumatic events at some point and it is frustrating when others do not believe. One may have regular depression and not receiving proper treatment for it is Hell. The text is important because it shows how women are viewed as weak and fragile and are not taken seriously. How women should not do anything that is enjoyable (ex. writing, painting, and drawing) and that their only role in life is to please their husbands and take care of their children, which is not the only thing women are meant for.

Works Cited

Barth, Melissa E. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition, Jan. 2004, pp. 1–2. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=103331MSS24819620000510&site=lrc-live&authtype=cookie,ip,custuid&custid=infohio.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” California: The New England Magazine,

1892. Print.

Hudock, Amy E. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series, Mar. 1995, pp. 1–3. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=103331WOM15359610000535&site=lrc-live&authtype=cookie,ip,custuid&custid=infohio.

Hume, Beverly A. “Gilman’s `Interminable Grotesque’: The Narrator..” Studies in Short Fiction, vol. 28, no. 4, Fall 1991, p. 477. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=cookie,ip,custuid&custid=infohio&db=aph&AN=9705041537&site=ehost-live&scope=site.

Perkins Gilman, Charlotte. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Literary Cavalcade, vol. 53, no. 8, May

2001, p. 14. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=4388217&site=lrc-live&authtype=cookie,ip,custuid&custid=infohio.