The Yellow Wallpaper

"The Yellow Wallpaper", by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is the story of a submissive wife whose husband pushes her from depression into insanity. The husband is a doctor, whose treatment for his wife’s apparent post-partum depression is slowly driving her mad. This treatment involves isolation and deprivation of her writing, her favorite thing to do. The woman tells throughout the story how she disagrees with the diagnosis given by her husband and how she must …

…get”(432). Her plunge into insanity is shown by her statement regarding the woman in the wallpaper, “I don’t blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!”(439). The author presents a dilemma to the reader through the direct link between her freedom and her sanity. Is the woman better off being sane and repressed, or was there a victory in the end by her insanity crushing that control?