Gilman writes in the form of first-person diary entries penned by the narrator. Living under patriarchal rule, she is discouraged from self-expression and productivity via work and writing. More broadly, we could see the prison-like room she inhabits (with barred windows, a gate on the stairs, rings in the walls, and a nailed-down bed) as symbolic of her situation as an upper-middle-class woman of a particular time and place (19th century America). She lives under her physician/husband’s care as a patient (deemed abnormal), subjected to the “rest cure” as a treatment for what appears to be postpartum depression.įiction in the form of first-person diaries The secluded, rented country home and the attic room the narrator inhabits come to represent or symbolize her situation and her very self.
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. This story starts with a mystery: the house seems to have “something queer about it.”Īs we read on, it becomes clear that the house is not the only thing strange about this story.
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