The Yellow Wallpaper Literary Analysis

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the protagonist narrator and her physician husband John move to a secluded, Gothic-style English estate for the summer after the narrator has a baby and develops a “temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency” (165). John has put her on a strict bed rest treatment in a particular room without any social, physical, or mental stimulation. She and her husband are staying in the upstairs nursery which the narrator describes it “a big, airy room...with windows that look all ways” (166). She also notices the repellant yellow wallpaper in the room that looks like “one of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artisitc sin” (166). Reduced to no activity as a part of her treatment, she begins to analyze the wallpaper over and over until she begins to see women crawling and creeping inside the wallpaper. The narrators environment and setting in the 19th century at an asylum-like house in a prison cell bedroom helps develops the theme of an oppressed, patriarchal ideology in the
Women are considered second class citizens compared to men on a hierarchic scale. Gilman portrays this in “The Yellow Wallpaper” when the narrator states that she opposes the treatment she is given and admits, “Personally, I disagree with their [John and her brother’s] ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do?” (165). The fact that the narrator questions what to do suggests that she’s helpless and has no power or control of her life. She wants to socialize and participate in activities instead of being cut off from the outside world for the treatment of her illness, but she is powerless against her husband. The societal norms of the 19th century are for women to be submissive to men, which are