The Yellow Wallpaper Essay

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, is one of many women that experienced having a mental illness during the Victorian Era, resulting in the harsh treatment of women to cure them. Gilman was in the narrator’s very shoes and wrote this story not for entertainment, but to tell a special message meant for men and the rest of society, being that the harsh mistreatment of women causes adverse effects. Gilman’s purpose of writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” was to acknowledge that women suffer from being mistreated by men and to demonstrate to men how their actions affect women’s health. The setting of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is set in the Victorian Era, where gender roles were explicitly assigned. The women were restricted to only holding a role of being a good wife and mother to a man. They were to be pure, pious, domestic, and submissive. Men were to be in control and be the “breadwinner” of the household. The women would have control over everything in the home, while the man would have control of the home itself and …show more content…
Gilman experienced what Jane did in terms of being treated with The Rest Cure for her illness and stated that she “came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over” (Gilman). In the story at the end, Jane’s husband walks in and sees her ripping off the wallpaper and faints. This part in the story illustrated that men were realizing that they were blinded by their own power and they were actually hurting women. Gilman states, “ I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, with its embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal... and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it” (Gilman). The story was a living proof that women were affected by the mistreatment of men, but people disregarded this and argued that the story not be published for other