Effects of 19th Century Society’s View of Women on the Narrator of “The

Charlotte Perkins Gilmans short story The yellow-bellied Wallpaper is a literary exaggeration of Gilmans personal battle with depression that exploits not besides the flaws in the perception of depression in the late 1800s but the flaws in that societys views on women as well. Set up in a diary format, the entry document a three calendar month stay at a secluded mansion where the fibbers physician conserve John, who has told friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with his wife, has brought her in on the sabbatical, of sorts, in hopes of treating her nervous depression (394, par.10). The diary format comes from the situation that the narrator is not openly allowed to write or work as part of her treatment. The ledger becomes her secret confidante and as well as a map of how her depression becomes a full blown psychosis. Having been instructed by her husband not to focus on her illness she sets her sights on the yellow flame tree patterns committing every a rtistic sin on the wallpaper of the converted bean plant/nursery that John has commandeered as their bedroom for the summer (395, par. 34). As the narrator forces her egotism into submission in the presents of her husband and his sister Jennie, her depression seem so transform into a state of paranoid hallucinations fueled by her coercion with the yellow wallpaper. Finally the inward turmoil manifest its self in a very outward way and erupts into full on madness with the narrator believing she is the woman that she has seen in the wallpaper trying to escape. Having noted the slow decline of the narrator from imaginative and independent to manageable and secretive strikes a personal cord with me, as I to progress to suffered with depression in my personal life. I plan to identify... ...ge/ReferenceDetailsWindow?displayGroupName=Reference&disableHighlighting= saturnine&prodId=SUIC&action=2&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CCX3470800268&userGroupName=lftla_pultch&jsid=ba2a9816fea4773bf2d1 b3da34a59a1bTreichler, Paula A. Escaping the Sentence Diagnosis and Discourse in The Yellow Wallpaper. Tulsa Studies in Womens Literature, Vol. 3, No. 1/2, Feminist Issues in literary Scholarship (Spring - Autumn, 1984), pp. 61-77. JSTOR. Pulaski Technical College Library, AR. 22 Nov. 2011. Wiedemann, Barbara. The Yellow Wallpaper. Short Fiction A Critical Companion. 1997. Literary Reference Center. EBSCOhost. Pulaski Technical College Library, AR. 22 Nov. 2011.