This brought Gilman into frequent contact with her independent and reform-minded great-aunts: Harriet Beecher Stowe, an abolitionist and author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin Catherine Beecher, the prominent advocate of “domestic feminism” and Isabella Beecher Hooker, an ardent suffragist. During his absences, Perkins left his wife and children with his relatives. Although Gilman’s father frequently left the family for long periods during her childhood and eventually divorced his wife in 1869, he directed Gilman’s early education, emphasizing study in the sciences and history. Author BiographyĬharlotte Perkins Gilman was born in 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut, to Frederick Beecher Perkins, a noted librarian and magazine editor, and his wife, Mary Fritch Perkins. Most modern commentators now interpret the story as a feminist indictment of society’s subjugation of women and praise its compelling characterization, complex symbolism, and thematic depth. Hedges’s afterward to a 1973 edition of the story that “The Yellow Wallpaper” began receiving scholarly attention. Early reviewers generally classified “The Yellow Wallpaper” as a horror story, with most commenting on Gilman’s use of Gothic conventions.

Horace Scudder of The Atlantic refused to print it, stating “I could not forgive myself if I made others as miserable as I have made myself!” Eventually, “The Yellow Wallpaper” began to win converts, and American writer William Dean Howells included it in his The Great Modern American Stories: An Anthology in 1920. Gilman initially had difficulties getting “The Yellow Wallpaper” published.

To carry out this treatments, the woman’s husband takes her to a country house where she is kept in a former nursery decorated with yellow wallpaper. She is not allowed to read, write, or even see her new baby. Like Gilman, the unnamed protagonist of the story is advised, based on medical theories of the time, to abstain from any and all physical activity and intellectual stimulation. The story is a first-person account of a young mother’s mental deterioration and is based on Gilman’s own experiences with postpartum depression. “The Yellow Wallpaper,” first published in 1892 in the New England Magazine, is largely considered Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s best work of short fiction.

The yellow wallpaper critical analysis