The Yellow Wallpaper Literary Analysis

       In "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells the story of a young woman who suffers greatly both physically and mentally as a result of her mental illness.  Through the narrator's view of the wallpaper, in relation to her own stability and her separation from the rest of the world, Gilman challenges the perception of gender equality in 1892.

       From the very beginning of the story all the way through to the end, the narrator is isolated by her husband due to her mental illness. The two of them rent a house for the summer for her to "get better," while in this house, the narrator is restrained to living in what she believes to have been a nursery in previous years.  But based on the bars on the windows, and nails holding the bed down, it can be inferred that the room has been used to treat mental patients in the past. The setting of the whole piece focuses on isolation and more specifically the room with ugly yellow wallpaper that the narrator was confined too.  This demonstrates the control that the narrator's husband had over her, but very specifically defining how horrible and uninteresting the room that she was forced to live in.  His force is also very apparent because although she was not very happy where she was, she never really put up a fight to get away from it, also exemplifying the dominance of the male power in their relationship.
       In a nutshell, without the setting of the story, Charlotte Perkins Gilman would not have been able to successfully prove her message of male dominance within "The Yellow Wallpaper."  By having such a horrible depiction of the narrator's living area, Gilman was able to exemplify the inferiority and fear that the narrator feels towards her husband, and how woman as a whole can feel towards over-powering and controlling men.