5-2 Charlotte Perkins Gilman "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was oppressed from the start.  She was from a impoverished home and had little formal education.  She did marry but was very unhappy and wrote about her oppression.  Considering the time she lived she was expected to be a devoted wife and mother.  Women were expected to listen to their husbands and conform to society's expectations.  She began having episodes of depression.  The doctor suggested she refrain from basically all expression including writing, painting, and reading.  she continued to be unhappy and realized freedom and independence was her best option.  In my opinion she came to her senses and divorced her husband.  She did marry again later on to George Gilman.  This time she was engaged in a successful marriage.  She was a strong advocate of women's rights and even after being remarried she continued her crusade.  Throughout her career she had a profound impact on women.  She was also an advocate for health care, civil justice, labor rights, and poverty.  She spoke of many topics and reached a wide audience. 

In the story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" Gilman drew from her own life to create one of her most renown stories.  Her experiences with mental depression and suffering help to create such a complex story.  One of her reasons for writing the story, according to the text, was to expose the mistakes made by medical science in treating the insane.  This story saddens me because you can feel her sadness.  She is locked up in her room with her illness.  Her husband thinks he is helping her by keeping her locked up in her room, but he is only making her worse.

At first she is fascinated with the yellow wallpaper, and soon obsessed with it.  It takes on a life of its own, and consumes her completely.  She is the yellow wallpaper.  She is spiraling out of control, and is trapped in her own mind.  Her isolation is worsening her illness and day after day you can sense her falling apart.  I felt remorse for Gilman, because I knew this related to her life.  The more isolated she was the worse her depression was getting.  I think that in today's time anyone would agree that isolation is probably the worse thing for depression and mental illness.  The horror was the fact that she was suffering so greatly and yet her husband was ignoring her plea.  He wanted her to get better, but he did not listen to her.  She begged to get rid of the wallpaper, just like she begged for a change in her life.  In the end she ripped the wallpaper free and herself.  It directly relates to Gilman's life when she broke free of her first marriage.  She ripped the wallpaper down and felt free and relieved.