The Yellow Wallpaper Feminist Analysis

In her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman explores themes of feminism and inequality. Gilman uses her own life experiences and her struggle with Postpartum depression to create such vivid detail and imagery within her story. Gilman married Charles Stetson after living a very long and lonely childhood. After having children of her own She began struggling with long periods of depression and her husband sought out the advice of a doctor. Weir Mitchell was his name, he popularized the rest cure which Gilman mentions in the short story briefly. "Mitchell introduced the rest cure, with its components of bed rest and minimum stimulation (46). Although most of his patients were women, he held conservative views concerning

If you have had a child, you may or may not be familiar with the term postpartum depression. Postpartum depression in today's times is defined as depression suffered by a mother following childbirth, typically arising from the combination of hormonal changes, psychological adjustment to motherhood, and fatigue, but back in her time before they knew such a thing could exist they would just prescribe a "rest cure" for them. The narrator in the story is married to a man named John is a Physician. John takes the advice of a physician and they come up with a plan to limit her creativity and thinking so that she would not exhaust herself. John moves Jane away from everyone to an isolated home in the country side. "when she 'tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day and tell him how [she] wish[ed] he would let [her] go and make a visit to cousin Henry and Julia." (Seuss) It shows that she literally felt trapped in this home. John would leave her home for extended periods of time while he went off to work, and the worst of all he doesn't allow any creativity which for her is a huge deal because she is a very passionate writer." John disallows such an action as it would constitute a break in the schedule he had, in his patronizing belief that the "father" knows best, set for her."(Seuss) also Wiedemann state, "Mitchell sent her home with explicit directions among which was 'never touch a

She was brought along to help with the upkeep of the home and to help John keep a limit on the tasks that Jane would and wouldn’t been allowed to do. Jennie believes that Jane just needs rest although she is the only character besides the narrator who acknowledges the yellow wallpaper. As the story concludes we see that Jane is worse off now than she was before they even ventured to the new home and began the rest cure to treat her postpartum depression. Jane begins seeing a woman outside of her window, the same woman later is believed to be the woman living under the wallpaper in the room. At the end of the story Janes mental state is completely compromised and taken over by the idea that she has now become the woman from outside of the window and the woman beneath the wallpaper. "Ultimately, she loses her sense of individual identity and merges with the woman behind the wallpaper"