“The Yellow Wallpaper” is Gilman’s attempt to show the ill effects of cultural restrictions and forced inactivity on women’s lives during the late Victorian age. Two generations later Gilman proved equally outspoken. Her great-aunts Catherine Beecher and the novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe both championed social causes of their era. Gilman, however, was born into a family of outspoken women. Living during the restrictive Victorian Age and the “golden age of hysteria,” Gilman experienced firsthand the frustrating limitations placed on women in her era, many of whom were victimized by society’s complete misunderstanding of postpartum depression and other psychological maladies. A short story set in New England in the 1880s published in 1892.Ī woman suffering from depression is subjected to a “Rest Cure.” Relegated to an isolated country house and forbidden to work or exercise, she goes insane.Įvents in History at the Time of the Short StoryĪn autobiographical tale, “The Yellow Wallpaper” details Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s personal battle with depression and the disastrous “Rest Cure” treatment she received.
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