Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born July 3, 1860. She struggled through her difficult childhood with her father abandoning her family forcing them to move many different times. Because of her many moves, her education suffered and she often felt alone and depressed. She married artist Charles Stetson at age twenty-four and birthed a daughter named Katherine. Within the ten years of her marriage to Charles, Charlotte suffered severe depression and although she went through many treatments she never fully recovered. This struggle with depression was the basis for her short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. This story emphasized her experience with loneliness and depression. The character in the story feels trapped and inferior. She doesn't like to be told what to do but is not confident in herself. Throughout the story she gains that confidence. In a Literary Analysis of The Yellow Wallpaper it explains this.
 "Finally, the woman completely lets herself go. She enjoys looking at and playing with the wallpaper and she no longer cares what anyone thinks. She totally and uninhibitedly gives in to herself and allows her feelings to be expressed. "Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor. IT sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it" (171). The woman is doing as she wills and destroying that which limits her. One may argue that she has gone insane, and subsequently furthered her illness, but I believe Gilman's intention is to show her celebration of self. "I've got out at last," she says to John, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pushed off most of the paper so you can't put me back" (172). Finally, John faints. And now, it is the woman who is in control, creeping over him."

I believe that Charlotte wrote this story as a 'Ha, I'll show you' type of piece. This was her way of reaching for an equality for women and developing herself to the 'fullest degree.'

For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia-and beyond. During about the third year of this trouble I went, in devout faith and some faint stir of hope, to a noted specialist in nervous diseases, the best known in the country. This wise man put me to bed and applied the rest cure, to which a still good physique responded so promptly that he concluded that there was nothing much the matter with me, and sent me home with solemn advice to 'live as domestic a life as possible,' to 'have but two hours' intelligent life a day,' and 'never to touch pen, brush or pencil again as long as I lived.' This was in 1887…—Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "Why I Wrote the Yellow Wall-paper," 1913

Every kind of creature is developed by the exercise of its functions. If denied the exercise of its functions, it can not develop in the fullest degree.
—Charlotte Perkins Stetson (Gilman),
from Hearing of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Committee on the Judiciary, House of Representatives, Washington, D.C., January 28, 1896

The interesting thing about Charlotte Gilman though, is that in 1935, when she was informed that she had inoperable breast cancer, she committed suicide. I feel that she is giving up on her life which doesn't really support all that she thought on the life of women. I also though it was interesting because she expressed thoughts of suicide within The Yellow Wallpaper.

"The paper is describes as being

…dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide-plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions (161).

This paragraph is extremely important to the story, portraying not only how the woman feels about herself, but also what her husband's therapy is doing to her. Her description of the paper being "dull enough to confuse the eye" and "constantly irritating and provoking study" is alluding to her sense of inferiority and burden. The "lame uncertain curves" she speaks of are likely to reference the ridiculous suggestions that he husband makes for her, and "suicide" being the fate that is destined to result if followed. The "unheard of contradictions" express the faultiness of John's methods. She describes him at one point: "He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me" (165). He does not, however let her do what she wills to do and what she knows she should do, which is use her mind and express herself."