The Yellow Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was interesting in the way in which Gilman was able to project her own life experiences into the story. It is widely known that Gilman used her own experiences with the rest cure and her own problems in order to write “The Yellow Wallpaper.” It was also interesting how she called out Dr. Weir Mitchell, Gilman’s real life doctor her prescribed the aforementioned cure. Like Gilman, the narrator’s mental condition worsened the more time she spent under the rest cure and the more time she spent isolated from others. The most interesting part of the story was the narrator’s interactions with the wallpaper and the woman behind the wallpaper that the narrator keeps on seeing. Known to be a feminist writer, Gilman used the wallpaper and the woman of the wallpaper in order to symbolize the struggle between women and the patriarchal society Gilman lived in. At one point, the woman of the wallpaper is described to take “hold of the bars and shakes them hard” (Gilman 12). This furthers the sense that the wallpaper is acting like a sort of object of oppression towards the woman. At one point, the narrator becomes the woman of the wallpaper, believing that she came out the wallpaper herself. This further emphasizes the theme of women versus a society dominated by man, in that the narrator is trying to free herself of the oppression of men, namely her husband John, and to free herself of an induced isolation.