The Yellow Wallpaper Mentally Ill Wife

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, the demeaning relationship between the alpha husband and the mentally ill wife demonstrates how the majority of women were treated in the late nineteen hundreds. The main idea of the short story comes from Gilman’s own personal experiences and are portrayed through the way the wife is treated in the story. The husband is manipulative and controlling throughout her life, and the manipulation only increases as her health begins to fail. Throughout the whole short story, there is the idea that women as a whole were viewed as less than men. Gilman grew up during a time that women were viewed differently than men, and this is obvious in her writing. For example, the majority of wives …show more content…
She envisions a women in the wallpaper who is trapped behind all the patterns and cannot leave. The woman in the wallpaper is the most prominent example of symbolism in the entire short story. She tells us, “There are things in the wallpaper that nobody knows about but me, or ever will” (Gilman 201). The wife is trapped inside her husband and societies rules that she cannot escape. It’s a hushed rule that is followed by everyone but not talked about. She repeatedly tells her husband and his sister that something is wrong and gets blamed for making it up or bringing it upon herself. She gets order up to the room with nothing but the wallpaper. With given nothing to do and being banned from writing she secretly writes about the wallpaper. Staring deeper and deeper into the ugly smelly wallpaper she begins to see a woman. The woman in the wallpaper renders all the women oppressed in the time period, who are trying to leave yet are stuck because of the rules and patterns of society. A women should obey her husband and not question in fear why he would leave her or send her away. As the wife comes to the connect of the lady and women, she feels it is her duty to free herself form the