Literature overview and critical analysis

¶ … Yellow Wallpaper": Sources of Narrator's Insanity

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story about the sad descent into insanity of a woman that was first published in 1892. This essay speculates on the sources of the narrator's insanity.

The main source of the narrator's insanity is the restrictions imposed on women in a male-dominated society. This social condition of women was more pronounced in the late nineteenth century when the story was written and first published. In the story the narrator's life is so overwhelmingly dominated by male figures (her brother, and later her husband) that she is unable to make her own choices about her life and is kept imprisoned physically as well as mentally. In The Yellow Wallpaper the narrator's husband is always deciding what is supposedly good for her, and she has reached a stage where she has lost confidence in her own judgment. Such uncertainty is depicted in her remarks such as, "You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do?" (Lines # 14, 15) or, "Personally I disagree with their [her husband's and her brother's] ideas... But what is one to do?" (Lines # 22, 25) This leads to a situation in which the narrator loses control and slips into a world of fantasy and ultimately -- insanity.