by Jane Ward

Created on: August 06, 2008

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's revolutionary piece of short fiction "The Yellow Wallpaper" exposes an aspect of sexism that is rarely discussed; psychological abuse. Though the narrator of the short story never rises above her situation and, in fact, descends irreperably into madness by the end of the tale, "The Yellow Wallpaper" is without a doubt a piece of feminist writing. In fact, the feeling of despair tht the reader is left with at the end may be what makes it such a strong piece of feminism, because Gilman is beseeching her readers to open their eyes to a situation that she felt needed immediate remedy.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was writing during the "first wave" of feminism, as it is now called. In the twenty-first century we have progressed to a third wave of feminism, which deal with such issues as equal wages for high-powered business people, and reproductive choices. Before we could get to this stage, however, people like Charlotte Perkins Gilman had to prove that men shouldn't have the right to absoluate control over their wives.

In "The Yellow Wallpaper" we are introduced to our narrator, a women who suffers from a vague illness that keeps her indoors, confined to a bed with hideous yellow wallpaper in which she hallucinates all sorts of things in the pattern and among the cracks.

As the short story progresses, it becomes apparent that the narrator's illness (which would no doubt be called "clinical depression" and treated with therapy or medicine nowadays) is made siginificatly worse by her conditions. Her husband has taken it upon himself to declare her in need of rest and nothing more. This of course, creates a vicious cycle, because the more the narrator is left alone in the room with the hideous wallpaper, the farther insane she goes.

That someone would be as cruel or negligent as the narrator's husband is not the most horrible part of the story however. The real chill comes from the fact that society simply accepts her husband's diagnosis and wishes for his wife's liefstyle. Gilman's message in this story is that women are all too often assumed to be in good hands under the care of husbands or fathers, but these very men all to often end up being the cause of their problems, and remain free to abuse the women in their lives completely free of worry that there will be retaliations from either the law, or simply from concerned family or friends.

Learn more about this author, Jane Ward.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.