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Jenn Zaun
Professor Lago
Eng 1500-15
Essay 4 Draft 3
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Trapped Behind The Yellow Wallpaper
Whenever reading a story, it is not uncommon for one to wonder where the story came
from. Even if the story is fiction, there has to be some kind of inspiration as to why the author
wanted to write about a particular character, right? Nothing is really ever random or totally made
up. This is proved in Charlotte Perkins Gilman short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. Even
though it is said to be fiction, there is enough truth behind it to have it relate to Gilmans life.
Throughout Gilmans life, she experienced many events that would have driven her to feel like
the woman trapped behind the yellow wallpaper that she writes about. Not only did she not have
a father figure, but she lacked a lot of emotional support from her mother, leading to many
conflicts in her life. After being raised by all females, Gilman had clashing views with her
husband and it would soon drive her into a depression showing that her experiences early in life
were the root to her emotional problems.
The troubles would start for Gilman when she was six years old. At this time, her father
left home and the only contact Gilman had with her father was through letters. But, these letters
were never enough for Gilman to live with. At fifteen, she wrote him letters that expressed her
desire for more letters, longer letters, letters with money, letters with advice (Carey). But, her
requests were never met, the subject of his letters were always briefly, reciprocated (Carey).
Based off her fathers lack of action towards her, Gilman says the word father in the sense of
love, care, one to go to in trouble, means nothing to me (Carey). Clearly, her statement is
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proving how her father was never there for her. For Gilman to say that the word father means
nothing to her is a very harsh statement, so it is obvious that there is some anger behind her
comment.
But, despite the lack of a father figure in Gilmans life, she still had her mother there to
raise her. However her mother, Mary Westcott, was also effected by the absence of her husband
and her childrens father. Mary Westcott struggled with the emotional and financial demands of
raising two children alone and starved her children emotionally (Feminist Writers) and her
experiences greatly influenced the way she raised her children. Because her own experience
taught her of the dangers a soft constitution pose to a woman, Mary withheld affection and
emotional displays from Charlotte and wanted the girl under her strict control (Beekman) and
these withholdings could have potentially greatly effected Gilman. Although Westcott was now
raising Gilman and her sister, she was not alone in doing so. Throughout her childhood, Gilman
was constantly around strong-minded females and she also had a family history of rebellious
feminists. Her fathers aunt, who helped Westcott raise her daughters, was Harriet Beecher
Stowe who wrote Uncle Toms Cabin, a novel on slavery. Her other aunts were Catherine and
Isabella, Catherine was the founder of the Hartford Female Seminary (an educational institution
for females) and Isabella was a dedicated suffragist (Chopin). Therefore, because of her lack of
father figure and prominent female figures, Gilman never experienced a traditional household
where men and women had different responsibilities. Because all she saw was a woman
providing everything in the home, it could potentially give her a different view on how women
should act towards their husband. Gilmans mother would have handled the financial
responsibilities as well as the household chores on her own since there was no husband to split
the responsibilities. By handling everything on her own, Gilmans mother must have been a very
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independent woman and by being exposed to that, Gilman might not have known what to expect
when she married Charles Walter Stetson and they were bound to have conflicts.
Not long after marrying Stetson, their marriage would soon face those conflicts which
clearly leads back to the household environment she was raised in since Friction began between
the pair and immediately over the inequality of the roles of husband and wife (Feminist
Writers). Now, the problems in her marriage could possibly lead back to the lack of a father
figure in her home. Since there was no man in her house, all Gilman saw was her mother and
other female figures in her life taking over both parental roles. This would cause Gilman to not
know what is a mans job in the house compared to what a womans job is in the house.
Gilman was surrounded by active feminists, like her aunt Catherine who started an educational
institution for women. And, during the time of Gilmans marriage, women getting an education
would have caused controversy since women were not supposed to be in control of the
household. It was set that women had certain roles and men had certain roles so with Gilman not
being exposed to a division of roles, she would not have known what her job would have been
and probably felt as though she should be more independent in the relationship. Because of her
not having an idea of how a man and woman should work together in a home, she probably felt
like she was being controlled by her husband since, in her experience, her mother did everything
in Gilmans home on her own. But, if her father had been present in her home life, Gilman would
have been raised in a household that had a father and along with a mother figure, which would
have given her an idea of how responsibilities in a relationship would have been divided.
According to the article Fathers Absence and Its Effects on Daughters, not having a father in a
childs life is harmful for the child and it was discovered that Females without father figures
often become desperate for male attention losing a father will alter their perception of men,
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and they may have trouble forming relationships with men (Mancini) which could be proved
in Gilmans first marriage. Even in a normal household, when a conflict arises, the husband and
wife can usually sit down and settle their problems through a conversation. But if Gilman never
saw that happen it makes sense that she might have not known how two married adults would
handle disagreements.
During her marriage with Stetson, though, Gilman gave birth to a daughter, Katherine but
shortly after the birth Gilman consulted with neurologist S. Weir Mitchell and he put her through
a treatment that essentially made her condition worse. After Katherines birth, Gilman began
suffering from severe depression and Dr. Mitchell had her go under rest cure, as he did with
many of his patients. Under rest cure, the patient goes through relaxation and seclusion that helps
bring the patient back into a childlike state. Gilman was told to live life as far as possible
have but two hours intellectual life a day and never touch pen, brush, or pencil again as long
as [she] lived (Gilman). But, instead of helping her with her case of depression, Mitchells rest
cure only made it worse. According to Gilman, she went home and obeyed those directions for
some three months, and came so near the border line of utter mental ruin that [she] could see
over (Gilman). So, since the rest cure is thought to bring the patient back into a childlike state
and upon doing so this only made Gilmans depression worse, it is safe to assume that Gilmans
problems travel back to her childhood. When returning to her childlike state, she was also
returning the feelings she had then, like the abandonment of her father.
Upon learning about Gilmans history, The Yellow Wallpaper is now clearly turning
into a story about Gilmans life and her feelings while going under Dr. Mitchells rest cure. In
her short story, Gilman writes in the first person, almost like it is her own diary. The narrator in
The Yellow Wallpaper is suffering from nervous depression, just like Gilman is. She is also
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having complications in her marriage where her husband, John, seems very controlling since
whenever he comes around the narrator she hides her journal. Also similar to Gilmans real life
is how the narrator goes under the care of Dr. Mitchell and becomes worse while undergoing rest
cure. The narrator was instructed not to write or think at all just like Gilman and they both
disobeyed the doctors orders and wrote to escape their own thoughts. Although when Gilman is
discussing why she wrote The Yellow Wallpaper she confesses that she never had
hallucinations or objections to [her] mural decorations (Gilman) but that does not mean that she
is not feeling the same way the narrator in her story was feeling. In the story, the narrator
becomes obsessed with the wallpaper that is surrounding her in her bedroom and begins to feel
as though there is a woman trapped behind the wallpaper who is trying to break free. By the end
of the story, the narrator is completely insane and believes that she is the woman trapped behind
this wallpaper. Even though Gilman is saying that she did not actually believe there was a
woman trapped behind the wallpaper in her real thoughts, that does not mean that Gilman did not
believe that she was also trapped. Not only could she have been feeling trapped by a controlling
husband, but she also could have been feeling trapped by her own thoughts while in the rest cure.
The other reason why she wrote The Yellow Wallpaper was to show Dr. Mitchell the error of
his ways (Feminist Writers). She wrote this story as a statement to show that when trapped
inside of her own head, this rest cure would send her over the edge.
Conclusively, the different factors of Charlotte Perkins Gilman could have caused her to
feel depressed and led her to live a life similar to the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper. Her
father abandoning her during her childhood would be the root to a lot of Gilmans problems that
her rest cure would bring back to her. From the beginning, the strong female figures in her life
would give her an unrealistic idea of how a normal household should function which would later
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cause problems in her future marriage with Charles Stetson. Also, when undergoing rest cure to
put her back into a childlike state to help with her nervous depression, she became more
depressed, supporting the claim that Gilman faced a lot of troubles in her childhood.

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Works Cited
"Charlotte (Anna) Perkins (Stetson) Gilman." Feminist Writers. Ed. Pamela Kester-Shelton.
Detroit: St. James Press, 1996. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Literature and the Writing Process: 10
th
Edition.
Coleman, Linda, Day, Susan X., Funk, Robert, and McMahan, Elizabeth. Boston:
Pearson. 2014. 238-249. Print.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper'?" Charlotte Perkins Gilman's
"The Yellow Wall-Paper": A Sourcebook and Critical Edition. Ed. Catherine J. Golden.
New York: Routledge, 2004. 45-47. Rpt. in Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Vol.
201. Detroit: Gale, 2008. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Apr. 2014
Mancini, Lisa. Father Absence and Its Effects on Daugthers. Final thesis, 2010.