The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman Meaning

The yellow wallpaper by charlotte perkins gilman.

The yellow wallpaper charlotte perkins gilman meaning. This story starts with a mystery. The yellow wallpaper is a short story by american writer charlotte perkins gilman first published in january 1892 in the new england magazine. Analysis of the yellow wallpaper by c. At first it seems merely unpleasant.

Charlotte perkins gilman s classic short story the yellow wallpaper tells the story of a young woman s gradual descent into psychosis. Catherine sustana ph d is a fiction writer and a former professor of english at hawaii pacific university. The yellow wallpaper is driven by the narrator s sense that the wallpaper is a text she must interpret that it symbolizes something that affects her directly. It is regarded as an important early work of american feminist literature due to its illustration of the attitudes towards mental and physical health of women in the 19th century.

This critical analysis of the yellow wallpaper by charlotte perkins gilman 1892 highlights a long short story or short novella considered a feminist literary classic. The house seems to have something queer about it. The worst part is the ostensibly formless pattern which fascinates the narrator as she attempts to figure out how it is organized. Like kate chopin s the story of an hour charlotte perkins gilman s the yellow wallpaper is a mainstay of feminist literary study.

Accordingly the wallpaper develops its symbolism throughout the story. Set during the late 1890s the story shows the mental and emotional results of the typical rest cure prescribed during that era and the narrator s reaction to this course of treatment. First published in 1892 the story takes the form of secret journal entries written by a woman who is supposed to be recovering from what her husband a physician calls a nervous condition. The yellow wallpaper is often cited as an early feminist work that predates a woman s right to vote in the united states.