The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman illustrates how women in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had no basic rights and experienced severe oppression in many aspects of their lives. The early nineteenth and late twentieth centuries limited the basic rights of women. The time period influenced women’s suffering tremendously. Gilman shows this suffering throughout her short story. Jane, the narrator of the short story, suffers from what is now called postpartum depression. The time period in which she lived was a major attribute to her condition. The Yellow Wallpaper’s publishing year is 1892, which was far before women’s rights or feminism. Many think that the Yellow Wallpaper was a cry out from Gilman to reach women all over the world.
Women often felt that they could not express their feelings during this time period. Gilman illustrates this well through her character, Jane. Jane explains that she knows her husband, John, would think it was absurd, but she must say what she thinks and feels sometimes (Gilman 314). Jane is completely controlled in her life. She makes no decisions for herself, just as many other women during this time period.
They were to be only viewed as mothers and housewives which many women felt that to be unfair to them. Because the society of this time felt this way about the women, Jane felt humiliated. John’s sister doesn’t want another job besides being a housewife because that is the only occupation women did during this time period (Gilman 313). John’s sister is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper and hopes for no other profession (Gilman 313). Women were merely looked at to be nothing other than mothers or housewives to men and that is why Jane felt humiliated to not have been viewed as equal as men and John’s sister felt condemned to her