The Yellow Wallpaper (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- First Published: 1892
- Type of Work: Novella
- Type of Plot: Social realism
- Time of Work: The late nineteenth century
- Setting: New England
- Genres: Psychological fiction, Social realism, Short fiction, Women’s literature
- Subjects: Husbands, United States or Americans, Wives, Power, personal or social, Sexism, Gender roles, Psychology or psychologists, Nineteenth century, Marriage, Doctors, New England, Mental illness, Reality, Feminism, Women’s issues, Oppression, Women, Imagination, Depression, mental
- Locales: East (U.S.), New England
Characters Discussed
The narrator, unnamed, who also is the protagonist. She is an imaginative, creative woman living in a society that views women who exhibit artistic and intellectual potential as anomalies, misfits, or, as in this story, ill. The narrator, having recently borne a child, apparently suffers from an ailment now identified as postpartum depression. Her husband, John, who is a doctor, misidentifies her condition and prescribes a “rest cure” made popular by the well-respected physician Weir Mitchell. The rest cure assumes that intellectual stimulation damages...
[The entire page is 767 words long]
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