ENG232-50

Literary Analysis of “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Women’s literature always presented a unique view into the female American experience.

When the feminist movement challenged the role of women in society many female authors

responded by writing stories that presented strong, self-reliant, intelligent women. The works of

Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a perfect example of feminist voices in literature because she

revealed women’s individuality and spoke out against social expectations of women. An

example of this is in her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, like the unnamed woman in the

story Gilman herself suffered from postpartum depression. “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written

by Gilman after her physician Silas Weir Mitchell prescribed her the rest cure, a cure that was

mainly prescribed to women. This treatment usually resulted in the women being restricted to

six-to-eight weeks of bed rest, they would become isolated from friends and family and

sometimes were even force-fed. The story is about an unnamed woman who is slipping further

into insanity as the story progresses insanity, which is caused by her pre-existing mental

condition. Which is made worse by the treatment prescribed to her by her husband, which was

that she refrains from working, the suppression of her imagination and the isolation from her

friends and family. The author successfully uses the vivid imagery of the setting and first-person

narrative to illustrate how the treatment prescribed to the unnamed woman by her husband is

harmful both physically and mentally.

The narrator observes that she is “absolutely forbidden to work” (Gilman 193) until she is

well again by husband and physician John. She however thinks that writing or any other kind of
work would be good for her, the narrator states “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with

excitement and change, would do me good.” (Gilman 194) Not having a creative outlet in a way

contributes to the decline of her mental health. Because the narrator wants to write but cannot

because of the opposition from her husband it is shown to influence not only her health but her

mental state as well. This is evident when Gilman writes “I did write for a while in spite of them;

but it does exhaust me a good deal--having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy

opposition.” (Gilman 194) While she manages to write throughout the story by hiding it from

John and his sister. The narrator believes if she were able to write without having to hide her

condition would improve, which is proven when the author writes “I think sometimes that if I

were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me.” (Gilman

196)

Throughout the story the narrator is told by her husband to repress her imagination, “He

says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is

sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to

check the tendency.” (Gilman 196) But by the end of the story the narrator is completely insane,

she imagines the patterns on the wallpaper becomes bars and that the back patten she also

imagined is a woman, “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and

worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it

is as plain as can be.” (Gilman 200) During the story John isolates the narrator from people and

the outside world. The narrator states that John says she cannot have any visitors until she is well

again, “When I get really well, John says we will ask Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long

visit; but he says he would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to let me have those

stimulating people about now.” (Gilman 196) Her isolation contributes to her eventual
breakdown, “It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work.”

(Gilman 196) But by the end of the story the narrator isolates herself from everyone, “I have

locked the door and thrown the key down into the front path.” (Gilman 204)

The use of first-person narrative throughout the story results in the reader not only seeing

things from the narrator’s point of view. But is also causes the readers to feel as though they are

slowly going insane over the course of the story as well as the narrator. The readers also see from

early in the story how isolated the narrator will become because of how Gilman describes the

house as “quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village.”

(Gilman 194) When the narrator goes on to say that “there is something strange about the house”

(Gilman 194) is an example of how Gilman used the setting to foreshadow future events in the

story. Since the beginning of the story the narrator is shown as an imaginative young woman, she

remembers scaring herself as a child with imaginary monster and enjoys the thought of the house

they are staying as being haunted. But as a part of her cure John forbids her from doing anything

that could exercise her imagination. But throughout the story it is shown that she turned her

imagination toward various objects in the house. As the narrator slips further into insanity her

fixation on the wallpaper grows deeper until she is completely insane. Her fall into insanity

begins when she starts to keep a secret diary and she begins to slip further into her fantasy world.

She finally slips into total insanity at the end of the story when she realizes that woman in the

wallpaper is herself and says to her husband that “I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane.”

(Gilman 205) It is implied by Gilman that Jane might be the name of the narrator a name that

became unfamiliar to the narrator herself and her husband.

 I believe that the point of this story is that the psychiatric treatment from the late 1800s

were horrible and ineffective. But the treatment of postpartum depression the use of isolation,

the forbidding of work and the suppression of imagination not only did that not help it also made

the condition worse. In conclusion the message that Gilman was trying to convey in this story

that the “rest cure” is inhumane and most times worse than the actual disease.
 Work Cited

Sydney, Nancy. “Women's Contribution to Early American Literature” Owlcation, 2018,

https://owlcation.com/humanities/female-perspectives-in-American-literature Accessed 19 Feb.

2021.

Gilman, Charlotte. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Writing-the-Nation, A Concise

Introduction to American Literature 1865 t o P r e s e n t https://ung.edu/university-

press/_uploads/files/Writing-the-Nation.pdf?t=1510261164762 Accessed 19 Feb. 2021.