Intelligent writers often ridiculed, thought crazy because of their convictions, and oppressed by society come to reflect these values in their work, or more appropriately they often reject these values in their work. Such is the case with Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. Like the main character in her short story, Perkins Gilman underwent the now infamous rest cure of Dr. S. Weir Mitchell. She was told never to touch pen, brush or pencils as long as she lived, just like the character in her story. This nearly drove the author to utter mental ruin. As she says in Why I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” “I went home and obeyed these directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline of utter mental run that I could see over” (Perkins Gilman 1).
The author decided, once she ignored the doctor and returned to writing, to write a short story that would mirror the process by which she was almost driven insane. She then proposed to send a copy to the physician who never acknowledged it. While Perkins Gilman did not hallucinate or have delusions about her own wall coverings, she embellishes her story to bring the point home more forcefully. The narrator in the short story is not so fortunate. The narrator is unable to avoid the descent into full blown insanity that Perkins Gilman herself escaped. Her ripping down of the wallpaper that represents the oppression surrounding her is a victory of independence but nonetheless a sign of her complete descent into madness “I’ve got out at last. In spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!” (Perkins Gilman 19).
The narrator in the short story lives inside the orders and oppression of those who portend caring for her. She tries to use the wallpaper to replace the missing identity others have tried to silence in her by refusing to allow her any in
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