The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is about a woman who suffers from temporary nervous depression. Her husband, a doctor, has taken her to a summer vacation home for a rest therapy; however, the woman's condition worsens and she sees images of faces in the wallpaper of her room. She believes the images are of women creeping behind the paper and she cannot help but to fixate on them. She tries unsuccessfully to tell her husband and with time sees the images more and more frequently. In the end, she locks herself in her room and tears off the wallpaper. The story is a portrayal of the plight of women's suffrage and the beginning of the rise of feminism, as well as a reflection of the author's own life and experiences, at least most of the feminist groups seem to think like that.
"The Yellow Wallpaper is a small literary masterpiece. For almost fifty years it has been overlooked, as has its author, one of the most commanding feminists of her time" (her progress towards Utopia with selected writings 123) as said in the article "Afterword to The Yellow Wallpaper" by Elaine R. Hedges. Elaine writes in the critical article that Charlotte Gilman is one of the America's foremost feminists. Further more, the "art piece", "The Yellow Wallpaper" is on of the rare pieces of literature we have by a nineteenth-century woman, which directly confronts the sexual politics of the male-female, husband-wife relationship. If this was a feminist document as portrayed and supported by many feminist groups worldwide, than it is a masterpiece dealing with sexual politics at a time when few writers felt free to do so, at least so openly. But, in 1800's being abandoned by her father, being divorced, and the rest of the trauma that Charlotte Gilman lived through will distinguish a person form the rest of the society, as it did. The trauma mentioned previously means that Charlotte Gilman lived a difficult life in a society where having no father and being divorced was not a common case in 1800's as they are today.
