The first time I read the Yellow Wallpaper I was struck by the sheer force the words have on the reader. Perkins Gillman plays a mind game with her words, and the reader is made to join her sense of imagination. I first read it for a literature class, and each of the students in the class had a different interpretation of the story. This seemed extremely effective - it had made all of us think, and imagine. It had made is not just analyze the words, but it made us become a part of the story.I myself felt that the woman in the story was quite amazing - there were two men in her life, her husband and her brother both doctors by profession who were most incensitive to her needs. As can be expected of that time period, they were more interested in the norms of society, and were not going to allow the woman to act contrary to the norm. She however, was not about to give up on behalf of the norm. She was going to fight to the very end, and it felt almost as though she had liberated her own mind when she stopped seeing another woman in the wallpaper, but herself became one with it. Those of you who read this should also go ahead and read something on the author. It is a truely amazing story, and leaves plenty of room for the imagination. or. In one of her essays she talks of why she wrote this story.

This short story, based upon the author's own experiences, is a powerful tale of one intelligent woman's struggle with madness, the role of (married) women in society and family in the late 1800s, and how she copes with well-meaning but misguided relatives and their ideas of a woman's nature and abilities. Many consider it an early feminist novel, and I agree, although I would extend the author's message to any group that finds itself severely restricted by society's notions of appropriate behavior, goals, and the nature of the group.
The narrator of the story is, from a modern point of view, a normal, young, married woman who also has a desire to write. However, bound by Victorian mores and restrictions, this desire to write is deemed inappropriate at best and casts questions about her not fulfilling her (only) role as wife (and mother). She was only to focus her attention on "domestic" concerns (house, husband, children) and anything remotely intellectual was considered a threat to her sanity and her physical health. When she refuses to bow to society's (and her husband's) ideas of womanhood, she is confined to a room for COMPLETE rest (meaning NO mental stimulation of any kind, no reading, no writing). What makes matters worse is that her husband (a doctor) is also her jailer, and instead of truly understanding his wife as a human being, opts to follow society's standards instead of doing what is in the best interest of his wife (and her health, both physical and mental). Not surprisingly, she rebels a bit, and continues to write her thoughts in a journal, hiding the journal and pencil from her husband. When her deception is discovered, she is even more strictly confined than before, and denied contact with her children.
It is at this point that she begins her descent into madness--not from the desire to write and express her creativity, but from being denied an outlet for that creativity. She was not mad before she was prescribed complete rest, but rather the complete rest which caused her madness. She begins to imagine things (shapes, objects, animals, people) in the yellow wallpaper which covers the walls of the room to which she is confined. As more restrictions and controls are placed upon her, her imagination grows, until finally she strips the wallpaper to reach the figures, and is found by her husband, surely and completely mad.
I liked this story very much because the author conveyed the kind of dead lives many talented, creative women must have been forced to lead due to society's ideas of women and their abilities while fully backed by the medical profession. She clearly illustrates that in this instance, doctors and husbands do not know best, and that their very best intentions had the precise effect of bringing about the madness that they sought to cure. As I read the story, I wondered why her husband (and the doctor) were so blind as to the causes of her "nervous condition". It obviously was not working, and rather than demonstrating their intelligence by trying something else or, God forbid, asking her what she needed (a couple hours per day to devote to writing, a small thing indeed), continued along the same methods of treatment, only with more restrictions! The social commentary and the commentary on the status of women in society and in their own families is handled in an effective way by the author, not only in her prose but in the development of the characters and the storyline. It is a most persuasive plea of the basic idea of feminism--that women are people too, with talents and abilities outside of their roles as wives and mothers that deserve an opportunity to be developed. In reading this story, I am amazed by how far we as a society have come in changing our views of women, and yet by how much further we have to go. I highly recommend this book.
This book was also made into a show that aired on PBS' Masterpiece Theatre in the late 1980s. I have not been able to find a copy of the program, but remember that it was well-produced and faithful to the story.

This book truly captures the constraints felt by so many women, both in Perkins' time and in our own. She is able to touch on a very sensitive subject with amazing poetic prose. The fact that this book was written in the nineteenth century makes it all the more remarkable!