The Yellow Wallpaper

At first it was difficult to find the meaning behind the yellow wallpaper. However, after listening in lecture and learning about the history of women and the rest cure, the difficulties that Charlotte Perkins Gilman experienced and her reasons for writing this particular story were made much clearer. The emphasis on how much restriction and oppression she faced is evident in the main female character, as she struggles to fight for the attention and freedom she needed. The use of imagery, particularly, the lighting, was interesting to me. On page 10 she writes, "At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars!"She shares the struggle of how women had to hide in the day, forced by society to stay within their own domestic spheres, and how at night, they fought to be free.