Summary Of The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

S. Weir Mitchell was one of the more admired physicians of the latter half of the nineteenth century. His famous "rest cure" for "neurasthenia" was practiced by many physicians and perhaps took a huge toll on the lives of many women under their care. In "Wear, Tear, and Hints for the Overworked," Mitchell explains that the sicknesses and weaknesses of the male sex are caused by the sicknesses and weaknesses of the mother passed on to her offspring. He compares urban American women with the ladies of Europe and finds the American women far more emotional and weaker than the European women. Further explanation by Mitchell reveals that women are like "...vampire[s], sucking slowly the blood of every healthy, helpful creature within
What is most interesting about this description is that Gilman chooses to identify the ugly and patchy, stripped off paper as belonging to a boys' school, and not simply a school or even a family home. This image seals the wallpaper as belonging to the world of men, which Gilman uses to later metaphorize the wallpaper as representative of a male dominated society. Gilman continues her initial description of the wallpaper with images of "...lame uncertain curves..." that "...suddenly commit suicide - plunge off at outrageous angles, abolish themselves in unheard of contradictions" (Gilman, 43). Although it was unnecessary for Gilman to use images of death and self-destruction to describe her ugly wallpaper, these images not only produce a feeling of sadness and discomfort in the reader, but also are used to characterize the plight of women: oppressed not only by men, but by other women as well who are in sense destroying themselves. The imagery of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the strongest, description of the color and pattern of the wallpaper. The color is at once "dull," "lurid," and "sickly" (Gilman, 43). It is both "orange" and "yellow" (Gilman, 43). She takes several pages and different passages to sacrifice on the unpredictable nature of the wallpaper. It moves, changes, sometimes has almost a pattern,
The windows are described as "barred" and how jumping out of the window would be dreadful because the. “. bars are too strong even to try" (Gilman 43, 57). The bedframe is first described as "...fairly gnawed..." which the narrator later admits she "...got so angry I bit off a little piece at one corner..." (Gilman, 57). The bedframe is also "...nailed down..." and it "...will not move..." (Gilman, 57). There is a "...gate at the head of the stairs..." which her doctor/husband will not move for her (Gilman, 44). Even though this imagery is disjointed and lacks any lengthy or too descriptive passages, it is arguably the most meaningful imagery in the story. After all, once "neurasthenia" was accepted as a psychological disorder, would not women afflicted with it be branded as crazy? Maybe not openly, however the ways in which their doctors and husbands treated these women might have made them feel as if they were either crazy or about to become so due to the treatment afforded to them. Gilman claims that her reason for writing "The Yellow Wallpaper" was to keep others from suffering at the hands of doctors such as S. Weir Mitchell and their "rest cures." Her profound use of "insane asylum" imagery in "The Yellow Wallpaper" suggests that the asylum is a metaphor for the way that women were locked up and kept powerless in society, driving