The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a short story of oppression that women faced during the late 1800s. Gilman writes this story on the basis of her own personal knowledge and experiences of what she went through during this time period. "The Yellow Wallpaper" exemplifies the suffering and distress one woman had to endure because of the overwhelming male dominate society she lived in. It is a story of one woman's liberation and release from a suppressive and controlling male.
The narrator is a young mother who is suffering from a "temporary nervous depression". In order to cure her from this nervous fatigue, her husband John takes her to a colonial estate for a three month vacation Through out her stay here, she is forbidden to partake in anything creative or stimulating to the mind. She is to do nothing but rest and relax. At the beginning of the story she states "Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do?" (Gilman 370). This quote suggests that because she is a female in a male dominated society she has no right to disagree with or oppose their opinions. By saying "What is one to do?" she exemplifies perfectly how suppressed she actually was during this time period. In the very opening of the story she also states "If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency-what is one to do? My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing." (Gilman 369). This statement is a telling example of how this woman continuously lets male figures dominate her decisions and choices in life. She has an idea of what's wrong with her and how to get better, yet she dismisses them because she doesn't want to contradict the high standing male figures in her life.