The Yellow Wallpaper
First, let's take a look at the background of Gilman before and after she wrote The Yellow Wallpaper. Gilman lived during the late 19th and early 20th centuries and she definitely had her fair share of troubles. Her biggest struggle in life was living within the constraints of a society that put women in a class apart from everyone else; when in her heart she felt that she was an equal counterpart to men. She suffered depression from this problem for many years, until finally she was seem by a world-famous neurologist, Dr. Weir Mitchell, who simply prescribed her with rest. This "rest period" sent her into an even deeper state of depression, which she didn't come out of until she tried to resume her normal life, along with joining the American Woman Suffrage Association as a writer and active participant. Unfortunately, Gilman's life got so bad that her condition got worse and she fell to the insanity level, eventually causing her to commit suicide with chloroform.
Now that we have a little background on the author, we can take a closer look at the actual work and its characters. The two main characters of the story a narrator and her husband, John, and the story takes place in the 19th century. Life for the two is like most other marriages in this time frame, only the narrator is not...
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