The short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was first published in 1892. The story shows a woman brought to an “ancestral house” by her husband who is a physician, due to her nervous condition. She is convinced she is sick, but her husband doesn’t believe it is anything significant, instead explaining it as all in her head. Her husband insists she does nothing but rest, leaving her alone in a large upstairs room, which was once a nursery, while he is gone often overnight. She becomes seemingly obsessed with the wallpaper, and while at the beginning simply complains of how ugly it is she eventually, she begins to see movement behind the paper, attributing to a trapped woman. She begins tearing the wallpaper from the wall trying to free the woman. The story ends at the end of the summer when her husband comes to get her to return home but she locks herself in the room. When her husband finally gets in he sees her creeping around the room, proclaiming that she has finally gotten out and torn the paper away so he can’t trap her again.
The Yellow Wallpaper is one of the first accounts of postpartum depression and the severe consequences that can occur when not addressed properly. The story suggests the proper treatment of the disorder presented through a knowing narrator who cannot advocate for her own well-being due to views on the appropriate role of women at the time. This compelling account of what was labeled as hysteria indicates the link between the male dominated society and the consequences for women who stepped outside the boundaries of cultural gender role expectations.
The story The Yellow Wallpaper, is a power statement of the strength of women during the Victorian age, something they were prohibited by expressing due to the gender views at the time. The story depicts a woman who knows her own mind as well as her symptoms, which are very real, and who can inform the reader of the nature, symptoms and proper treatment for post-partum depression. However, the character is unable to have her suffering taken seriously by her husband who represents the views of the medical and mental health communities at the time, and ends up worsening to the point of psychosis..
Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper." Women 2 (1913): 3.
Suess, Barbara A. "The Writing s on the Wall: Symbolic Orders in The Yellow Wallpaper." Women's Studies 32.1 (2003): 79-97.
