Divorce In The Yellow Wallpaper, By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

During the late 1800’s, the subject of divorce was quite unmentionable. For women, divorce was burdensome to obtain; however, for men, if women committed a simple act of adultery, then a divorce could be granted. At first, it was almost impossible for women to get divorced, but later, if their husbands committed adultery and any other harmful crime, such as abuse, then they may file for divorce. Even so, it became futile for divorced women to live after this because the subject of divorce was so taboo that no one would accept them and they had to fend for themselves. Susan Glaspell, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Kate Chopin all expressed what women went through during an unhappy marriage and how they would rather suffer in their marriage rather than getting a divorce and obtain freedom. Chopin, Glaspell, and Gilman use concrete literary elements in each of their
The narrator suffered from a mental issue, postpartum depression, and her husband did nothing but claim she was in denial and that it was all in her head and continuously left her in a room all day. Being trapped in a room all day with no way out except permission from her husband drove her to insanity. The narrator began to have paranoia and believe that her husband in sister-in-law was trying to place her back into the wallpaper, which she became obsessed with. The wife may have thought she was okay and continuously tried to please her husband and she tried to control herself for her husband’s sake, but the husband did not yearn to believe that anything was wrong with his wife. See, her husband could not handle his ego being punished, so he thought that the narrator was overreacting, which he later learns the hard way that she was not. The narrator desperately needed to be freed from her mind and by going insane, she felt as if, ultimately, she was