Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

A detailed Summary of Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

"Gaining Freedom"

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Gilman is a sad story of the repression that women face in the days of late 1800's as well as being representative of the turmoil's that women face today. Gilman writes "The Yellow Wallpaper" from her own personal experiences of having to face the overwhelming fact that this is a male dominated society and how women suffer because of it.

The narrator, being female, is suffering from a "temporary depression". She states right from the beginning that "John is a physician, and perhaps I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind perhaps that is the one reason I do not get well faster." The narrator sets up the story to convey a certain opinion of the repercussions a woman faces in the care of a man. She obviously loves her husband and trusts him but has some underlying feeling that maybe his prescription of total bed rest is not working for her. The story mentions that she has an older brother who is also a physician and concurs with her husband's theory, thus leaving her no choice but to subject herself to this torment of being totally alone in his room with the yellow wallpaper. She stares at thi

s wallpaper for hours on end and thinks she sees a woman behind the paper. "I didn't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman." She becomes obsessed with discovering what is behind that pattern and what it is doing. The narrator with absolutely nothing else to do is reduced to staring endlessly at a pattern in wallpaper, thus creating some image that she feels is necessary to find out. Perhaps saving her own sanity. Once the narrator determines that the image is in fact a woman struggling to become free, she somehow aligns herself with the woman.

In the story she mentions that she often sees the woman creeping outside. "I see her in that long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her in those dark grape arbors, creeping all around the garden.... I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight! I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can't do it at night, for I know John would suspect something at once." The narrator is trapped and sees this girl out and how she is free. This shows the narrator seeing herself in the woman and when she sees the woman creeping outside, she sees herself. When she creeps outside she locks the door. She is afraid her husband will take away the only comfort she has since she was subjected to this "rest cure". She continues to pursue this obsessive project of getting the woman out. The narrator wants the woman to be free of the paper but does not want to let her go. The woman is her sanity; "I don't want to go out, and I don't want to have anybod

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Approximate Word count = 1090
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English