Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wall-Paper

In her short story “The Yellow Wall-paper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses various elements of fiction to express the central idea that people can’t be forced into roles for their life. Gilman utilizes the first-person point of view, symbolism, and conflict to portray her main idea, and illustrate the role that women held in the 19th century. The story is about a young woman who has recently given birth and is suffering from some form of depression (possibly postpartum.) This young woman is married to a well-respected doctor, John, that is convinced that the cure for his wife’s depression is as much alone time as she can get in a static environment. The narrator believes that if her husband would listen to her desires she would get well, but her husband is set in his methods. The restraints that John puts on his wife end up deteriorating her mental state to

It is important that Gilman opted to use the first-person point of view as it allows us to see the descent into madness that the narrator undergoes, as well as the way that she thinks about her relationships. John uses his status as a physician to make everything he says about his wife’s condition an absolute, this causes the narrator to question her own emotions in a constant mental tug of war that is exacerbated by her confinement. In her second journal entry, the narrator mentions that “John is away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious. I am glad my case is not serious!” (Gilman 794), this not only foreshadows the narrator’s fate but shows that she feels John doesn’t consider her case to be important since he spends so little time with her. The first person point of view also mirrors the isolation that the narrator experiences, and other than the woman in the wallpaper, the “dead paper” (Gilman 792) is the narrator’s only