When Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” was first published in January of 1892 in the New England Magazine, it was considered a dark chronicle that was protested by a Boston physician (name unknown) in “The Evening Transcript”, a popular newspaper in Boston between 1830 and 1941. This doctor wrote; “such a story ought not to be written, he said; it was enough to drive anyone mad to read it.” It wasn’t until later that the story was realized for the depiction of societal values in an age when women were making their mark in society, both intellectually and politically. The character Gilman portrays is caught between her own artistic expression and that of expected wifehood and motherhood being regarded as the sole role of women. The time was ripe for such a story with women making their way towards equality and the Suffrage Movement. Here was a woman propelled into a stereotypical role of the time who could not conform to the servile and ancillary qualities of how a marriage was supposed to be. A woman listened to her husband, held her hanky properly and carried a tussie-mussie. The convergence of Gillman’s character as being sequestered by her physician husband as a cure for her illness in a room with yellow wallpaper lays the foundation for what becomes an obsession with the Yellow Wallpaper. It is often said that artists and writers are touched by unusual qualities of the mind, perhaps even a bit of madness. The wallpaper in the story is representative of a creative mind that had no outlet of expression. Simply put, “necessity is the mother of invention,” and that’s exactly what Gilman’s character does. What becomes a nemesis is actually an awakening.
At the time, it was not uncommon for women to suffer from the “vapors.” Not much was known medically about the make-up of a woman’s psyche or reasons for erratic behavior. Women were often