Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a strong feminist, social justice advocate, and influential author. She has been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame and has published many literary works. While writing in the late nineteenth century, Gilman used her prominent voice to challenge the authority of men, especially contesting their biased practice in medicine. She is known for her highly controversial work that has questioned both gender roles and societal norms. 

In her most famous piece, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman analyzes gender roles in the medical field and their presumed effect on mental illness. This story was published in 1892 at a time when hysteria was a highly feminized and stereotyped mental disorder defined by extreme emotions. This time in history was also when the medical profession sought to legitimize itself in masculine terms through the development of the American Medical Association. The treatment the narrator receives in the story results in her spiraling decline in mental health. By rendering her characters a feminized patient and a masculine medical provider and linking this gendered power dynamic to the narrator’s deterioration, Gilman critiques the male-dominated medical establishment of the late nineteenth century. 

Gilman begins the story with the nameless narrator and her husband, John, just arriving at a summer rental house with their young child. The narrator is suffering from “temporary nervous depression,” which John likens to hysteria. John is a doctor, and he is in charge of attempting to cure his wife. He is a “physician of high standing” and is highly respected in the medical community. To improve his wife’s condition, John implements a rest cure. It is thought that through her resting, her mind will be at ease and her hysteria will settle. she will be, or so he thinks. The narrator is confined to a room in the house where she is instructed not to do any work or to write. As the story progresses, the narrator becomes invested in the yellow wallpaper in her room. The days go by and she continues to stare into the wallpaper. She starts to express that the design of the paper resembles a woman who is trapped inside. By the end of the story, the narrator becomes completely psychotic and tears the wallpaper off in an effort to save the imaginary woman. Her husband, John, is extremely concerned and is locked out of the room by his wife. The narrator enters a complete psychotic break and starts to visualize herself as the woman trapped in the wallpaper. 

The power dynamic in the story is clearly established within the first five pages of the text. These first pages set the mood for the remainder of the story while Gilman introduces the male-dominated medical approach to hysteria. Moments in the story point to a disconnection between what the patient wants and what the doctor provides. While filling dual roles as a patient and a wife to John, the narrator is hesitant to tell John what she really wants for her treatment. She recognizes that he knows best and has the masculine authority in their situation. John criticizes her supposedly feminine behaviors of “imaginative power and habit of story-making” and urges her to suppress them if she wants to get better. The power dynamic between John and the narrator is further examined by critics such as Jane Trailkill, who argues that a sex-neutral model of medicine is best for patient outcomes. She believes that Gilman’s story shows the “psychical consequences of the masculine refusal to listen to a woman’s words” and should be taken seriously (Thrailkill 526). 

It has long been acknowledged that Gilman’s story reflects aspects of her own life. Although Gilman is not technically the narrator of the story, there are some cross bridges between her experiences as a patient herself and how she was once treated by a physician. In a later publication, “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’?,” Gilman reflects on and describes some of her motivations for writing the piece. Gilman revealed that she herself had struggled for years with “severe and continuous nervous breakdown.” The male doctor who had been treating her ordered her a “rest cure” that demanded her to “never to touch pen, brush or pencil again as long as [she] lived.” Gilman followed this devastating treatment plan for months until she spiraled into the worst mental health state she had ever experienced. While reflecting on this encounter, Gilman embellished the details of her experience, specifically of hallucinations, and wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Although her concrete explanation that she wanted to “save people from being crazy” seems explicit, it is necessary to acknowledge that the story was a highly crafted response. Gilman took her experience and explicitly fictionalized it to form a social critique. This is important to understand because she was not writing what happened to her, she was using what happened to her as inspiration for her literature. This story has an abundance of relevant significance in the modern context of medicine. Although the “rest cure” in the way that it was used to treat the narrator is no longer typically practiced, there are remnants of it currently in use. Basic bed rest can be ordered for high risk patients and self care practice is encouraged for overall wellness. Another important and relevant aspect of the story is the relationship between patient and provider. The American Medical Association now recognizes in its code of ethics that “Treating oneself or a member of one’s own family poses several challenges for physicians.” This is the modern belief of the AMA because they acknowledge that “when the patient is an immediate family member, the physician’s personal feelings may unduly influence his or her professional medical judgment.” It is interesting to analyze the lengths that the medical field has come to improve patient outcomes and move away from a masculine and authoritative form of medicine in which there is refusal to consider the patient perspective. There is still a long way to go; however, rhetorical analysis of creative work by people like Gilman can call attention to these issues and make change happen.

Now, it is time to read some of the work for yourself. Click here to read the first five pages of “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Along the way you will see some text highlighted in yellow. Click on these words to access annotations for further analysis of specific moments in the story.