Isolation In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

As was common of the treatment of women during the nineteenth century, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," is one of oppression as John, the protagonist's physician husband, tries to cure her mental illness with a treatment plan of solitude and rest after moving in hopes his wife will regain her health. While critics have debated what causes the character's eventual insanity, María Teresa González Mínguez suggests that lack of a creative outlet lends to the woman's rapid regression. The protagonist's lack of a creative outlet combined with isolation ensures a downward spiral for the woman as symptoms of her mental illness ultimately consume her. While John hopes monitoring his wife's behaviors will cure her, his efforts only worsen her mental state. Not only does John isolate his wife to their bedroom, he condemns her writing completely, never allowing her to participate in it. Minguez believes that John's fierce restrictions serve as a form of bondage of the narrator, leaving her imprisoned in her home as well as by her inability to create (55). The protagonist's husband stripping away her freedom to write leaves her with nothing; she is forbidden to receive visitors, make decisions, or even be creative. After she is deprived from

The narrator eventually comes to identify with the woman she believes is trapped in the paper. Mínguez asserts that the young woman is, "projecting her own desire for escape onto her incomprehensible hieroglyphics" (55). The protagonist feels so confined that she sees herself as the one trapped in the wallpaper. If the woman had been allowed to use writing as an outlet, her obsession with the wallpaper may have never