Descent_Into_Madness

Descent Into Madness Charlotte Perkins Gilman's, "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the story of a woman's descent into madness as the result of being isolated as a form of "treatment" when suffering from post-partum depression. On a larger scale, Gilman is also telling the story of how women were kept prisoners by the confines of the society of her time and the penalties these women incurred when they attempted to break free from these confines. In the beginning of the story, the narrator, whose name is never divulged, has been brought to an isolated country estate in order to recuperate from "a slight hysterical tendency" by her husband, John, who is also a physician. From the outset it becomes apparent that she is an unreliable narrator due to her state of mind. The paragraphs of the story are short and choppy, indicating an inability to concentrate and a mind that is racing from one thing to another. The narrator talks about her imaginings that the house is haunted," . . . There is something strange about the house-I can feel it"; she also relates how everything she does exhausts her. These symptoms, as well as the numerous referrals by the narrator, woman, wallpaper, women, pattern, john, bars, time, story, society, mind, begins, even, escape, deeper, room, order, off, mental, married, madness, jane, gilman, day, confines, believes, been, becomes, attempted, about, yellow, window, walls, wall, upside, until, trying, through, suffering, slips, post-partum, places, out, narrator's, name, manages, makes