Yellow Wall Paper

Many works of literature deal with gender related issues. Some of these issues deal with how women are treated by their families and/or society. In the semi-autobiographical story “The Yellow Wallpaper", by Charlotte Perkin Gilman, the author portrays how a woman’s mental illness is mistreated by her husband/doctor. It addresses issues of mental illness and the medical treatment of women. This story clearly criticizes attitudes of men and the medical profession toward women, especially those with psychological and emotional problems. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a product of these times, she herself experienced the dominance of men over her illness and as a result she writes the yellow wallpaper represent her life in this time period.

According to the social norms of the time period, women in the 19th century were expected to fulfill their duties as wives and mothers and be content in their existence as nothing more. Men and women were divided between the public and private sphere, and women were doomed to spend their lives only in the household sphere. With that in mind, although John could be seen as the domineering villain of the story, he is simply a reflection of his society. The narrator’s desire to have more in her life than John and her child does not correspond to social expectations. Moreover, her love of writing and creativity further distinguishes her from the idealized “angel of the house” that she is

supposed to emulate. Gilman herself rebelled against these social expectations and, by leaving her first husband and moving to California to write was not deemed fit to belong in respectable society. The woman trapped behind the yellow wallpaper is nearly a perfect metaphor for Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Kessler, in her biographical essay on Gilman, makes the point that this one short story seemed to most closely echo the views of Gilman in regards to the oppression of women in her society. Comparing the two, Kessler writes, "this once she was able...