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Peter Falcicchio Professor Lago English 1500 April 10th 2014 The Yellow Wallpaper Several frequently asked questions have arisen when examining the last major work The Yellow Wallpaper written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Why did Perkins Gilman choose to write it? Was she clinically insane or depressed? Who was the short story written about if it were written to portray someone? What was she thinking when she wrote this? The Yellow Wallpaper is the type of story that awakens a deeper thought process and will have the reader attempting to get inside the authors mind. This short story also brings the reader into the mind of what the narrators husband describes as temporary nervous depression. With a deeper understanding of the questions that are addressed, it is apparent that The Yellow Wallpaper is a direct correlation to the life of the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The question whether Gilman is clinically depressed or insane can be examined in several different ways. First, the story would be an indication whether this could be true or not. She could have used the narrator as an alter ego of herself, using the story as a message she was trying to convey. If she were to use the narrator as herself, then the room she was kept in could have been used to symbolize her mind. How she was trapped inside of her own mind with no way out, constantly having people watch over her to make sure she did not do anything wrong.

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The house the narrator was kept in could have been a way of showing how her life has kept her trapped inside. Her mind trapped itself inside, caging her like a bird in a cage. Not being able to think outside the box or live beyond her means. Most have asked why Gilman decided to write The Yellow Wallpaper. She did not have an easy childhood. From a young age she did not have her father or any other father figure around for guidance. Also, her mother did not provide any affection toward her. The only contact she kept with her father throughout the years was having him recommend lists of novels for her to read. As for her mother, she did not show her affection so that her daughter would not develop a need for human affection. Affection is a basic need and developmental stage for all children to go through. Human nature is to interact with others and make connections with those who are imperative to you. With that taken out of the picture, Gilman would assume all people are like that. To add to her lonely childhood, she was prevented by her own mother from doing what she truly loved. Gilman, as a child, would always want to read fiction. This was taken away from her by her mother, as well as not being able to develop a strong friendship with others. A strong connection between her life and the story was made evident by having her mother forbid her from reading fiction and the narrator in the story having writing taken away from her as she was trapped in the room with the yellow wallpaper. Written on her suicide note, she left behind her final message, When all usefulness is over, when one is assured of unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one. I have preferred chloroform to cancer. She felt as if she did what she had to while still being a part of this

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Earth, but had nothing left to contribute. So, instead of letting life run its course and killing her slowly, she decided to take her own life to end it quickly. Some would say she is insane for taking your own life, but she must have had a different outlook. Her outlook on life must have entailed having her own reason to be on earth, and she must have fulfilled what those reasons were. The Yellow Wallpaper must have had a lot of meaning to Gilman with it being the last major story she wrote before she committed suicide. The reason she wrote The Yellow Wallpaper is because it did in fact relate to her own life. Gilman suffered from severe nervous breakdowns which continuously bothered her until she received help. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still-good physique responded so promptly that he concluded there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to "live as domestic a life as far as possible," to "have but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again" as long as I lived.(Lavender 4). She was told by this specialist to never touch a pen, brush, or pencil which directly relates to the story. Both Gilman and the woman in the room with the yellow wallpaper were advised and forbidden from doing what they truly loved. As Gilman was growing up she had a lonely childhood, she relied on the books that her father recommended for her as well as writing. Parallel to the events in the story, she had both of the things she relied on taken away from her.

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When they were allowed to read and write Gilman and the woman in the story had lesser symptoms of nervous depression. To help with her problems the woman and her husband moved into a house in a secluded area. However, this move had an adverse effect. The woman in the story had nervous depression before moving into the house but her experiences that followed caused her symptoms to worsen. For example, she was brought into a house where she does not want to live, and put in a room she did not pick out herself. Reading this for the first time may seem like she is in a mental institution with the amount of time spent keeping watch over the woman in the room with the yellow wallpaper. If it were up to the narrator she would spend all of her time writing, but is advised by her husband, who is also a doctor, against this. After having the only thing she still relied on taken away from her, the nervous depression symptoms began to get increasingly worse. Starting to hallucinate, she thought there was a woman trapped inside the walls of the room she was being kept in. The woman in the walls was trapped behind the ugly yellow wallpaper which the wife seemed to become obsessed with. Over time, she would start to think the woman was trapped in there and try to get her out. Toward the end of the story she would start ripping down the wallpaper to free the woman from the wall. To understand why Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, what first must be understood is her background and what went on within her life. Gilmans nervous breakdowns were treated by the noted best specialist in nervous depression. After seeing the specialist about her continuing problems she advised her not to write anymore. Years later Gilman did not adhere to the specialists advisement and she wrote The Yellow wallpaper. But the best result

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is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading The Yellow Wallpaper.(Lavender 9) Gilman wrote this to indirectly send a message to show what not being able to do what you love can negatively affect your mind. As Gilman states in an article she previously wrote It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.(Lavender 10) Having her doctor read this story after she wrote it showed him what she went through not being able to write. By writing The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman could have saved many people from going insane by a doctors wrong decision. The woman trapped in the wallpaper symbolizes how Gilman was trapped within her writing. The only way for her to escape is putting herself into the story and working her way out through her writing. It is like fighting fire with fire, she was not happy with her older works because she did not write what she truly wanted to write about. Gilman saved many people after writing The Yellow Wallpaper.

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Works Cited Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." Short Stories for Students. Vol. 1. N.p.: Gale, n.d. 278-92. Rpt. in Short Stories for Students. Print. Lavender, Catherine. "Gilman, Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper." Gilman, Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper. The College of Staten Island of The City University of New York, 8 June 1999. Web. 20 Apr. 2014.

Stone, Les. "Charlotte (Anna) Perkins (Stetson) Gilman." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2003. Literature Resource Center. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.