Charlotte Perkins Gilman

5.1                                                                             Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was broken from then starts.  She was from a poverty stricken home which offered little in education.  As she got older she did get married but wasn’t very happy.  There is where is wrote of her felling of unhappiness.  During the era of which she lived she was expected to be a faithful wife and mother.  Women were to obey their husbands and conform to societies expectations.  It wasn’t long before Charlotte started being depressed. Charlotte had seen the doctor which: he told her to take it easy and refrain from writing, painting, and, reading. She still continued to be unhappy and depressed. Then she realized that freedom and independence was her best option. I understand her in these feelings if someone is unhappy and depressed and the answer for good heath for a person it might end in divorce.  She did divorce her husband. She married again later to George Gilman which was a successful marriage.  She was a strong advocate of women’s rights; even after being divorced and remarried she continued her crusade.  Charlotte had a philosophical impact on women. She was also an advocate for health care, civil justice, labor rights, and poverty. Her topics grew as well as did her audience. 

The story “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman reflects from her own experiences to create one of her most famous stories.  Her experiences with mental depression and suffering helped to create such a complex story.  One of her ideas for writing the story according to the text was to expose the mistakes made by medical science in treating the mentally insane.  This part reminds me of a soap opera where they lock people up to maintain their safety that I feel is all wrong.  Speaking from a once very depressed person that had lots of depressed friends, all I and they wanted was to be left alone.  I wanted no one around me. But the best thing for me was when my friend’s called and took me places and then I seen the world in a better light and my life could have been so much worse. So I have now figured out how to just be thankful for what I have and try to help others that sometimes like all of us have struggles.  Being locked up with her illness by her husband isn’t helping her at all.

At first she is amazed with the yellow wallpaper, and soon infatuated as it takes on a life of its own, and consumes her entirely. She is the yellow wallpaper.  Charlotte is escalating out of control and is trapped in her own mind. Charlotte being in isolation is making her illness worse day after day. What made matters worse was her husband wouldn’t listen to her pleas for help. He thought by her being away she would be safe and ok. But on the inside of her mind she was going crazy.  He wanted her to get better, but he did not listen to her. Then she begged for them to destroy the yellow wallpaper, just like she begged for a change in her life. Charlotte had to do as she had done before with her first marriage, she had to take control. So she took down the wallpaper and freed herself.  This directly relates to Gilman’s life when she broke free from her first marriage. She ripped the wallpaper down and felt freedom and relief.