Literary Analysis: The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Essay

Since its issuing in 1892, The yellow-bellied Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, has generated a vicissitude of interpretations. Originally viewed to be a ghost story, it has been regarded as gothic literature, science fiction, a statement on postpartum depression, having Victorian olden attitudes and a go into the depths of mental illness. More controversial, but curiously unnoted is the topic of the rest cure and whether Gilmans associations ar fact or fiction. Evidence supports Charlotte Gilman may constitute misrepresented the Weir Mitchell Rest Cure, and pokes more holes in The Yellow Wallpaper.The storys female character is woeful from temporary nervous depression a flimsy hysterical(1) tendency, and prescribed a rest cure. The intervention obligate absolute bed rest, forbade physical, mental or hearty activities and required total isolation from family and friends. Eventually the insufficiency of stimulation and complete solitude only added to the desolation , and pushed her to the verge of insanity.The Yellow Wallpaper was based on Gilmans personal experience with postpartum depression and treatment received by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, pioneer of the Rest Cure. The parallels in the midst of her experiences and those of the story are noticeable, as are implications of recently nineteenth-century patriarchal and medical attitudes toward women, during that time.As a fictive story, and nothing else, The Yellow Wallpaper depicts a postpartum woman driven to psychosis by an inept mendelevium who is also her husband. However, as a fictional autobiography, it is postulate as an indictment of the nineteenth-century medical profession and its patriarchal attitudes. After the 1973 reissue of The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman directly criticizes Mitchells treatment, saying, the real purpose of the story was to reach Dr. S Weir Mitchell, and convince him of the error of his ways. She claimed his rest cure brought her hazardously near to losing her mi nd.Mitchells errors by many accounts, farther surpass his medical therapies alone. A tenacious male-chauvinist, by todays standards, he was vehemently oppose to women voting, and strongly against higher education. He felt it got in the way of being good wives and mothers, saying on that point had better be none of it. Womens finest nobleness agree to Mitchell, was to be homeful for others.