The Yellow Wallpaper

Assignment: „The Yellow Wallpaper“: Autobiography or fiction? Regarding the first supporting evidence where this short story is regarded as an important work of feminist literature that illustrates the attitudes of the 19th century towards women, more specifically their mental and physical health which the author tried to show according to her personal experience. The short story is actually a first personal journal entry that was written by a woman whose husband was a physician that had confined her to a bedroom that he had rented for the summer. The women is forbidden to work and therefore she has to hide when she is writing in her journal because the husband believes that in this way she could recover from what he calls a “temporary
In the end, the woman imagines that there are other women creeping around behind the patters of the wallpaper, and comes to believe that she is one of them. The woman locks herself in the room with the torn yellow wallpaper and feels that now that it is the only place where she feels safe and refuses to leave. There are supporting elements within the story that makes the story an autobiography and not a fictional story. In my opinion, the way that the author writes in such detail and in such craze about the wallpaper only gives me proof that the author herself experienced this craze of obsession over petty things for the simple reason of being confined and not having anything better to do since she was on “rest cure” and was not allowed to be with her child, work or even write. Basically, the details that the author writes about how something simple, like wallpaper can cause an obsession can only be written by a person that actually
However, unlike the protagonist in her story, Gilman did not reach the point of total madness, but she knew that her deteriorating mental condition was due to the oppressive medical regime that was meant to “cure” her. In addition, Dr. Mitchell and his treatment play a key role in the story in the third section of the text where the protagonist’s husband even threatens to send her to Weir Mitchell in the fall if she does not recover soon. According to the above arguments and the supporting facts, it can only be stated that it can be nothing more than an autobiography consisting of exaggerated accounts of what the author was going through personally and thus giving the short story fictional elements. However, the short story is an autobiography for the simple reason of it being based on actual events and perceptions of the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, even if it consists of exaggerated and thus fictional