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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 3 page essay that examines Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" (1892). The writer argues that for this story to be fully understood, it has to be considered within the context of the era in which it was written. The writer explains how the Victorian restriction of women drives the narrator to madness. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
Page Count:
3 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khgilsht.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
In the late nineteenth century, patriarchal culture was at its height. It was the considered opinion of educated men that women were constitutionally and intellectually inferior to men. For example,
neurologist S. Weir Mitchell was the leading medical authority of that era and it was his opinion that young women between the ages of 20 and 30 were likely to
suffer a loss of vitality induced through stress (Bak 39). Gilman herself was one of Mitchells patients and his "cure" consisted of locking the author in a Philadelphia sanitarium and
subjecting her to many of the restrictions that Gilman describes in her short story (Bak 39). Rather than relieving stress, Gilman found this experience to be tortuous. "The Yellow Wallpaper"
draws on Gilmans experience to demonstrate the futility and the danger of such "cures" by showing how severe restrictions can drive a woman into insanity. The story is narrated
by an unnamed protagonist. She is the wife of physician, John, who has diagnosed her as suffering from "temporary nervous depression--a slight hysterical tendency" (Gilman 154). Following the dictums of
Mitchells "cure," the narrator is never allowed any form of "work," not even writing, even though this activity is clearly therapeutic for her. She must write her journal in secret.
She is never allowed any control over her environment or her circumstances. Her opinions are always discounted by her husband. When they arrive in the country for an extended stay,
she protests against making a bedroom with horrible yellow wallpaper, a former nursery, their own. The narrators sister-in-law has taken charge of the household and the narrator is restricted from
even seeing her own child. The narrator writes that at least the baby is "well and happy" and has not been forced to "occupy the nursery with the horrid wallpaper"
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