Yellow Wallpaper Critique

Critiques of The Yellow Wallpaper
Throughout The Yellow Wallpaper, a lady battles against neurasthenia. The author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, based this story on events that took place in her life when she faced a psychological crisis. Feminist literary can also be defined in her writing of The Yellow Wallpaper. Gilman went through treatments for her problem with depression she faced. Not only did she suffer from postpartum but ever since Charlotte’s early adulthood she suffered from episodes of severe melancholia which is a psychiatric disorder. The narrator went by her husband’s treatments because he is a physician in the story and she figured he knew what he was talking about and knew what was best for her.

Charlotte Gilman attended
The lady says that she is sick and her husband who is a physician disagrees with her and says she is fine even though in reality she is suffering from nervous depression. As for her brother, he is also a physician and tells her the same thing. To try and treat her illness, the husband orders her not to write anymore and gives her the “rest cure” which orders her to sleep as much as she can. It is basically a treatment disallowing any type of intellectual or physical activity. The author went through the same conditions. “…`rest cure’ included no physical or intellectual stimulation and he roundly forbade Gilman to write, suggesting she `live as domestic a life as possible’.” (Charlotte Perkins) The rest cure was a treatment given to women of the nineteenth century. It basically imprisoned women from the world and did not allow them to take initiative in any activities. Being that men had say over women in those days they had say in giving them the rest cure which violated against women’s rights. Even though these rules were set, the narrator as well as Gilman went against them. they both still wrote, Gilman did not rest much as she moved from place to place, and the narrator only slept a couple hours in the day and never at night. The narrator had a secret journal she wrote in everyday about her true feelings that even John did not know. She
Her type of illness will cause this kind of side affect as a sign of worsening. Plus her appetite has gone down and this is another side affect. She states, “There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will…and it is like a women stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern.” (518 Gilman) The days pass and the narrator is only getting worse. The pattern in the wall becomes more and more clear every night and she makes out a woman behind the wallpaper and behind bars shaking the patterns causing them to move. Her sign in hallucinations can simply be defined in the feminist aspect as to showing how women back in the 18th and 19th centuries were kept away from society and were not allowed to do anything. They had no freedom and were controlled by men. “The front pattern does move-and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!” (521 Gilman) She is showing a sign of trying to escape the trap she has fallen in. Being that she only gets sleep during the day, at night she decides to start and peel off the wallpaper to save the girl creeping around the wall. As time goes on she thinks the girl in the wall now is her self. She becomes really cautious about the room and the wallpaper; she does not want anyone near it, touching it, or trying to peel it off because she wants to save the girl on her own, but she does not tell that to