In My Head: a Look at the Yellow Wallpaper

In My Head “Soft torture” is the method of destabilizing a person into no longer trusting reality or their own minds through methods such as extreme sleep deprivation. These techniques are used by intelligence agencies around the world for gaining information from uncooperative sources without having to resort to brute force in order to achieve their goals. But what happens when a person is unwittingly subjected to these tortures by both the people around her and herself? Who do you trust when even you have betrayed yourself without realizing it? In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” the main character Jane is driven mad by the wallpaper of her bedroom and the very time she lives in. In this story the setting is not only influential to what occurs but is the driving force behind everything making it the single most important factor in establishing the theme. Charlotte Gilman wrote this story at the end of the nineteenth century but never specifies the exact time that it is set in. Therefore, it follows suit that readers are to assume that it is set in the time that it was written which explains much of the interpersonal relations between the characters and their various social roles. The main character, Jane, is totally subservient to her husband and her wishes mean next to nothing in their home. This fact appears to be a natural part of life as no one bats an eye at her lack of control in her own life, “He said that after the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs and so on… But he is right.” Here Jane quits pushing the one issue that disturbs her in the house and is preventing her from recovering because her husband can easily dismiss her. Her opinions have no value of their own because her husband is both a man and a physician even though these opinions are about what distresses her personally. This is something that no one in the world can possibly know