“The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells the tale of a woman succumbing to madness following postpartum depression. First published in 1892, it stands out as a piece of early American feminist literature and it reflects 19th century society’s attitude towards women’s health -- both physical and mental. In the beginning of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator and her husband take vacation to the countryside to give the narrator some time to rest and recover. As the story progresses, the narrator becomes more and more bothered by the wallpaper in the room in which she is staying. At the end, the narrator finally loses it and her husband faints upon seeing how insane she has become. The narrator, referred to as Jane, has been suffering from what her husband, who is a physician, believes is a “temporary nervous depression.” He prescribes a “rest cure”
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She becomes too weak to write and devotes all of her time to studying the wallpaper. She begins to see shapes in the wallpaper -- to start off with, it looks to her as it is filled with “absurd, unblinking eyes.” The more she examines the wallpaper, the more she sees. She sees a pattern within the initial pattern -- something she describes as “a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure.” She feels as though her condition has not improved and her husband states that he will send her to Weir Mitchell, a well renowned physician, but Jane does not want this. Her mental state starts to decline and she becomes more emotional, crying at almost anything and her obsession with the wallpaper grows, with her becoming determined to find the purpose of the wallpaper’s pattern. The “strange, provoking, formless sort of figure” she initially sees begins to take the shape of a woman, whom she believes is trapped inside the wallpaper. At night when she’s watching this “woman”, she sees her struggling to free herself from the
