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The Yellow Wall-Paper

The Yellow Wall-paper
The journey into madness is a fascinating and morbid fall into oblivion that literary geniuses have been exploring since the dawn of the literary word. Insanity is such an interesting human state because it is a break from human normalcy. A person who is found insane can not be expected to take responsibility for any action committed while in this alternate state of mind. Even our judicial courts do not hold people criminally responsible for heinous acts, such as committing murder, if insanity at the time of the act is proven beyond a reasonable doubt. The short story, "The Yellow Wall-paper," by Charlotte Gilman, is a captivating work that gives an intimate look of one woman's desperate struggle to hang on to any thread of sanity, only to succumb to the inevitable downward spiral of her fragile mind. By combining an analysis of the S. Weir Mitchell's "rest cure" prescription for the woman and the vivid description given in "The Yellow Wall-paper," the journey of this woman's fall into insanity can be dissected and analyzed to better understand why Gilman chose to write a work such as this. The literary symbolism which is prevalent in this story is also very important in understanding this work, as is Gilman's own history of mental instability. Perhaps, by exploring the "rest cure" prescription, the literary symbolism, and the author's own mental history, a better understanding of the human condition and societal influences explored in this work can be achieved.
Charlotte Gilman was born Charlotte Anna Perkins on July 3, 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut (Britannica 1). Because of her father's abandonment of her family, she grew up in poverty and received irregular education. In May 1884, she married a man named Charles W. Stetson and soon realized that she was not suited for a domestic existence. She began suffering from a form of depression known as melancholia. Melancholia suffers have symptoms such as, "dullness, sleepiness…,...