The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is the story of a woman who feels trapped. She is asphyxiated and subjugated by her husband and by a patriarchal society that seem to be paying more attention to her body than to her mind. She is given bed-rest when what needs healing is her mind. All of the impotence and hysteria she feels as a result of this, is revealed in the story’s disordered narrative and writing. The overall design and form of “The Yellow Wallpaper” gives the reader the chance to experience the character’s insanity, instead of just reading about it. The journal-like structure sinks us in the narrator’s madness so that we can experience what she is living. Furthermore, it provides us with interrupted sentences, incomplete thoughts and all sorts of odd ideas. All of these, in the effort of making us realize what it is like to be a woman living behind the imprisoning “yellow wallpaper” of a patriarchal society.