Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an activist for independence for women, which was promoted through her popular stories and lecturers in the 20s. She was born on July 3rd, 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut and raised with no farther in poverty. Gillman wrote the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” in 1892 to emphasize the poor treatment of women and found a way to portray her own depression, by expressing it through the story. To summarize the story, it captivates a woman who is suffering from post-partum depression after having a child. Her husband, John, brings her to a mansion to retreat for the summer and restrains her upstairs in a nursery room. Truthfully, deep down the woman believes something is wrong with her, but her husband insists that she …show more content…
In this short story, the rhetorical concepts that play a role in her argument were pathos and logos because she not only showed an example by telling the story, but she also made you feel sorry for the woman and how her husband treated her. Gillman states in her essay "Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper" that: "Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, with its embellishments and additions to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations....) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad." This quote explains that she trusted her physician’s diagnosis, but once she went home and followed his directions, she later realized he was completely wrong. The result was not improvement, but instead she became worse and wanted to prove that he was wrong with how to treat people like her. She later states: "It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy and it worked." That statement alone describes her reasoning for writing the story and proves that she was in her right mind to do …show more content…
Although, the story also gets into bringing up the topic of how depression and being indefinably ill used to be handled. It generally focuses on how woman used to be dealt with and treated. Gilman left a legacy by writing this story because it helps speak up for many other woman in the world, who either didn’t know how to or just couldn’t express it in the way she wound up doing it. “The Yellow Wallpaper” should be viewed as a representation of how life was for women during this time period. My unique idea is that the wallpaper in the Narrator’s room represents imprisonment. The representation of imprisonment is created from the yellow wallpaper because the Narrator repeatedly asks to remove the wallpaper, but isn’t allowed and gets kept in that room often with the hideous wallpaper. Later, the story states the she is realizing that her husband’s treatment towards her is questionable and that she wants to escape her prison-like