Revise the Essay 3

Jones 2

Sucely Jones

Prof. XXX

ENGL-1302- Composition II

23 Feb 2021

Summary of The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper was written by Charlotte Perkins Stetson in 1892. This story is written in the first person. The primary character is an unnamed woman, wife of a physician John, who recently gave birth to her child and went to postpartum depression. The couple buys and moves to a big mansion with a garden in the country. The environment is very good, and her home is a perfect home for a couple with a newborn baby. She has some mental issues, and she is told to take complete rest. Two caretakers are hired to take care of the house and the child. Her husband believes the treatment is right for his wife. However, the situation turns out to be very toxic for the narrator. Since she has nothing to do but rest, she starts to overthink and goes through a lot of mood swings. There is yellow wallpaper in her room. Instead of looking outside of a window and enjoy the beautiful garden, she got obsessed with the yellow wallpaper. She starts to see a woman in that wallpaper who constantly requests her freedom. Sometimes, she sees multiple women trapped in that wallpaper. She tries to express her feeling with the husband, but the husband did not take her word seriously and force her to follow the medication. Her situation gets even worse because she starts to feel the smell of the wallpaper and the smell does not go anywhere. The woman inside that wallpaper constantly requests her to release her and she cannot tolerate looking at the wallpaper. One day, she locks the room and tears the wallpaper until she believes the woman is released completely and feels very happy. When the husband arrives and sees his wife’s action, he gets fainted.

The author wants to show the current situation of women at that time. Women are given the wrong medication and their words are not heard in the male dominating society. So, the main theme of this story is “Gender Inequality and Mental health”. The narrator’s husband never listens to his wife and keeps controlling her. She was forced to do what she does not want to. She even cannot express and share her feelings with her husband. The other major part the story covers is about mental health. It has beautifully described how doing nothing can make the situation worse for mentally ill people.

Work Cited

Charlotte Perkins Stetson. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, 1892