Introduction
LINK TO E-TEXT of “The Yellow Wallpaper”:
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/GilYell.html
Front page illustration for the original serialized version of The Yellow Wallpaper from the New
England Magazine (1892).
Credit: Poster courtesy of Library of Congress' Nineteenth Century in Print Collection.
For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown
tending to melancholia—and beyond. 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 that there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me
home with solemn advice to 'live as domestic a life as possible,' to 'have but two
hours' intelligent life a day,' and 'never to touch pen, brush or pencil again as long
as I lived.' This was in 1887…"
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Why I Wrote the
Yellow Wall-paper," 1913 "Every kind of creature is developed by the exercise
of its functions. If denied the exercise of its functions, it can not develop in the
fullest degree."
—Charlotte Perkins Stetson (Gilman),
from Hearing of the
National American Woman Suffrage Association. Committee on the Judiciary,
House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., January 28, 1896
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story "The Yellow Wall-paper" was written during a
time of great change. In the early- to mid-nineteenth century, "domestic ideology"
positioned American middle class women as the spiritual and moral leaders of
their home. Such "separate spheres" ideals suggested that a woman's place was
in the private domain of the home, where she should carry out her prescribed
roles of wife and mother. Men, on the other hand, would rule the public domain
through work, politics, and economics. By the middle of the century, this way of
thinking began to change as the seeds of early women's rights were planted. By
the end of the 1800s, feminists were gaining momentum in favor of change. The
concept of "The New Woman," for example, began to circulate in the 1890s1910s as women pushed for broader roles outside their home-roles that could
draw on women's intelligence and non-domestic skills and talents.
Gilman advocated revised roles for women, whom, Gilman believed, should be
on much more equal economic, social, and political footing with men. In her
famous work of nonfiction Women and Economics (1898), Gilman argued that
women should strive-and be able-to work outside the home. Gilman also
believed that women should be financially independent from men, and she
promoted the then-radical idea that men and women even should share domestic
work.
First appearing in the New England Magazine in January 1892, "The Yellow
Wall-paper," according to many literary critics, is a narrative study of Gilman's
own depression and "nervousness." Gilman, like the narrator of her story, sought
medical help from the famous neurologist S. Weir Mitchell. Mitchell prescribed his
famous "rest cure," which restricted women from anything that labored and taxed
their minds (e.g., thinking, reading, writing) and bodies. More than just a
psychological study of postpartum depression, Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-paper"
offers a compelling study of Gilman's own feminism and of roles for women in the
1890s and 1910s.
GUIDING QUESTION
What does Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story "The Yellow Wall-paper"
suggest about middle-class women's place and role(s) in this
society?
Student Name ____________________________________________ Date ________________
Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” Active Reading Chart
Use the worksheet to take notes on how the narrator discusses the world around her. Pay
close attention to her description, noting how her TONE and PERCEPTION of her
surroundings and situation change during the story. Use the Analysis column to offer
thoughts about the possible significance of the items you note. Write an argument (an
essay) that discusses your analysis/interpretation of the text using the chart below.
How does the Author
describe…
her room?
the wallpaper?
her illness?
her husband?
her other caretakers and
family?
herself?
her journal?
other notes and
observations:
Examples and
Descriptions from the
TEXT
Analysis/Interpretation
(Possible symbolic meanings,
oddities in descriptions and
social commentary)