The Yellow Wallpaper Literary Analysis

484 Words2 Pages
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a story about a woman whose husband, John, a physician, diagnosed her with nervous depression. He suggests that the only way for her to get better is the rest cure and moved her to a house that stood “well back from the road, quite three miles from the village” (Gilman 473). The rest cure did not have the outcome that was expected because she ends up going crazy by the end. The ultimate solution to help Jane was the rest cure but it had the opposite effect on her. The rest cure prevents Jane from having contact with the outside world excluding her husband and his sister. During the treatment, Jane is forbidden from working and writing but she must take phosphates and tonics while exercising, going on journeys, and enjoying fresh air.…show more content…
In spite of her husband’s wishes for her to not write, she does it anyways, but “it does exhaust [her] a good deal−having to be so sly about it” (Gilman 473). After living in the house for awhile, in a room that Jane presumes is the nursery, she begins to feel like there is something else in the presence. She tries to explain to John what she is feeling but he tells her that all she feels is a “draught” and closes her window (Gilman 473). This action brings to surface her reality because she is enclosed in a room by herself and closed off from everyone else. Another distraught that came along with being secluded, the husband took her baby away which “makes [her] so nervous” (Gilman 475). As time goes on, Jane continues to write and becomes fascinated with the yellow wallpaper in her room. John believes that the rest cure is working but it is the wallpaper that
Open Document