Question

after you have read "The Yellow Wallpaper" and "How I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper'" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, discuss how the two works are related. What about Gilman's actual life experiences influenced the story> How are they different? Why?

Answer 1

1. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an American novelist and humanist , who protested for social reformation , and was born on 3 rd July 1860. She authored many poems , short stories, novels etc.

" The yellow wall paper " is a short story , written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the year of 1892. It is one of the major primary work coming under feminist literature. It is first published in The New England Magazine. It is mainly narrated to protest against opressions faced by the women of that society. Women suffered societal and occupational suppression a lot in that era. Also the short story criticized a form of treatment " rest cure" , that the physician on the story prescribed for the woman (  the narrator), who is the central figure of the story and who is suffering with a type of depression, they called it as ' temperory nervous depression '.

" Why I wrote the Yellow wall paper " is a reflective description written by Gilman for a giving a light to the readers about the ' story of the story ' The yellow wallpaper. This reflective essay she published in The American yawp Reader , in the year of 1913. In that piece Gilman explained the background and her real life experience that become a seed for the story.

2. Actual life influence on the story: Gilmans actual life was the main inspiration for the story. From childhood she was witnessing the societal discrimination against women No one was there to encourage a woman, who is talented in literature or any other areas or skills, other than house chore works. After the marriage and the child birth, she herself suffered with a type Melancholia, for which she met a famous physician in the city. He prescribed a particular treatment , that may restrict all the activities including intellectual creations like poem or story writing etc, called " rest cure". Her condition got worsted with the " rest cure" and even she is not allowed to touch pen or pencil. She came out from the therapy or stopped it with help of a friend . Then started with her writings , then her condition got improved. This was the real life experience of Gilman and in this reflective essay she stated that , she was expressing her protest against such type of treatment, male dominancy and female suppression.

In the story The yellow wall paper, narrated in first person , narrator is presenting with depressive or hysteric features,who got a prescription of " rest cure".

The difference are , in the story the narrator got locked up in upstair nursery of an old mansion, that her husband rented out for her treatment, but her condition is getting worsted , and she had the hallucination and delusions that  a woman is trapped in the yellow wall paper in the room and she became completely mad. But in real life , Gilman not experienced any hallucinations or Delusions. She recovered from her depression by engaging in Activities.

The story, she written, is for expressing her disagreement towards some form of treatments and the common tendency of society towards women.