Literary Analysis

Background of “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Why did Charlotte Perkins Gilman write “The Yellow Wallpaper”? This story was written in a time women were looked down upon and weren’t seen equal to men. Gilman wrote this story based on her own controversy in her own life. Her own marriage led her to depression and this led to the writing of “The Yellow Wallpaper”. There are other reasons to why she wrote this story, she wrote it to speak out for the women in her time. Gilman was part of the feminist movement in the twentieth century. There are many reasons to why this story was written in this time; it was written through Gilman’s own experiences in life and the life women had during that time. Men were seen dominant over women in this era of society.

Gilman lived in a time when women’s rights weren’t equal to men’s rights in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century and this is part of the reason why Gilman wrote this story. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is seen as feminist criticism at this time; because in the story there is male dominance the controlling husband locks his middle class wife in a room with barred windows and tells her it’s “for her own good”, and she is also forbidden to write or have any kind of freedom really. The male dominance in this story is how Gilman sees the society at that this time, like when John the husband in “The Yellow Wallpaper” tells his wife that “she has temporary nervous depression and a slight hysterical tendency” and she says feels perfectly fine but her opinions clearly doesn’t matter to him he is always right in his eyes, and he also talks to her as if she was his child like when she says “let us go downstairs there are such pretty rooms there”, then he takes her in his arms and says “blessed little goose I could go down to the cellar and have it whitewashed into the bargain”. But all of the things it could symbolize points to feminist criticism in this story. There are many things that you can say this story is about...