The Yellow Wallpaper - A Reaction

5 Pages 1349 Words

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 19th century literary story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, has had many minds pondering her thoughts and ideas about the women “role” for over one hundred years. Works such as this piece are quite unique in the array of different views and perceptions an individual could take from their interpretation of the reading. Seeing the true meaning of the story and relating it to the proper time period proves to show a clear correlation between the story and people in the 1800’s.
A brief look at this story tells the reader of a woman, believed to be sick, staying in an “institution”. This isn’t a normal looking institution though because it is concealed as a summer home possibly for the reason to soften the ‘institutionalized feeling’ for the patient. The woman’s name is believed to be Jane and she has a passion for writing. She yearns to write as much as she possibly could in a day, if only her condition didn’t exhaust her of energy. John is Jane’s caring, loving husband who is also her physician. He diagnoses her and treats her for “temporary nervous depression” (Gilman 42). Staying in the old summer home, Jane begins to have strange thoughts toward the wallpaper in the room that she is staying in. Movements, images, and people begin to appear to her in the walls at night. The story comes to a conclusion with Jane completely losing her mind from hallucinations that she sees in the wallpaper.
In the 19th century, societies were based upon patriarchal groundwork. In other words, men controlled the society opposing female equality. Women of the 19th century were considered far inferior to males and most people seemed to be content with this feeling, or at least didn’t do anything drastic to change it. Men had control at the time and they did their best to keep it that way by suppressing women by any means possible. For example, limiting them in activities such as reading or w...