The Setting for Insanity in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" illustrates that being excluded from the public and locked away in solitary confinement causes insanity. Gilman uses setting to convey this point throughout the story. The unnamed woman in this story is told that she is suffering from a nervous disorder. Her husband takes her to a colonial mansion far away from her normal environment. He believes that taking her to a different environment will cure her of her …

…her illness and cannot be controlled any longer. She suspects that her husband John and his sister are the ones who put her in the wallpaper. In other words, she is blaming them for her isolation and confinement. So she tears the paper off the wall so that they cannot put her back. The story ends with her creeping around and around the room, which is signifies the level of insanity her environment has produced.