This "ancestral hall" that the narrator's doctor husband has rented for the summer does have some rather interesting qualities. For one, the narrator is confined to the third-floor room, a room that has a number of odd items in it. First, she tell us that the "windows are barred for little children, and there are rings, and things in the walls." In addition to the barred windows, there is a "gate at the head of the stairs," and the bed is "nailed down" to the floor. This sounds like a kind of prison, doesn't it? There are bars on the window and on the door to the downstairs (where the narrator, it seems, is rarely allowed to go), the bed is actually fastened to the floor so that she cannot move it, and there are those odd "rings and things" in the walls. When she tries to move the bed...
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later in the story because she wants to stand on it and rip the wallpaper, we begin to understand why it might be bolted down. The description of the "rings and things" almost seems to refer to some kind of restraining device. The narrator is being treated with the "rest cure": a common treatment for women who were anxious or not bonding in the expected way with their newborn children. If a woman refused to stay in bed and rest, she might actually be physically confined to the bed in order to force her to rest. Often, women being treated with the rest cure would simply pretend to feel better so as not to have to endure the treatment anymore, which gave it the appearance of working. With all of these descriptions, as well as the reference to Weir Mitchell (who famously endorsed this particular treatment), it begins to seem as though the narrator's doctor husband has actually rented out some kind of treatment facility where he can restrain and contain his wife in order to best treat her illness (which we would now call postpartum depression, but which they referred to with the generic catchall term for mental illnesses that seemed to affect women: hysteria).
At the beginning of the story, the main character narrates her surroundings. She explains that she is being taken to an isolated place, an old estate, which has been in turn taken by her husband.
It is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer.
A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity but that would be asking too much of fate!
By saying "securing ancestral halls for the summer" refers to the tradition of retiring to the countryside during the summer. Those who do not own their own summer estates would rent one to rest there for the time being. The ancestral hall to which she refers is probably a big estate which used to belong to an upper class aristocrat, and who probably lost it, or has to rent it out for profit.
Our main character has just had a baby and see seems to be suffering from a case of post-partum depression. This particular reason is why her husband procured this ancestral home, in their case. However, our narrator is clearly not very happy. She will be isolated and put to a "rest" cure where she will not be able to write, draw, or do anything BUT lay around all day, taking medicines, and making sure to stay out of everyone's way. This is what will ultimately lead to her final breakdown, where she will rip the wallpaper to supposedly liberate "a trapped woman" that lurks beneath it.
Describe the narrator's predicament and her family's response in "The Yellow Wallpaper."
The narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gillman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" is an unnamed married woman who has purportedly just given birth to her first child. The narrative is a recount of her experience as she is taken to an estate to undergo what was then known as "the rest cure". The reason why the woman needs the "rest cure" is because, from what the reader can infer, she is suffering from what we known in modern days as "post partum depression". The feelings that often arise as a result of post partum depression include melancholy, anxiety, and sometimes even psychosis.
The narrator's predicament is not so much what she is suffering (although that is bad enough), but the fact that her needs are not being met, and that her wants are not understood. For example, her husband strictly believes that, in order to achieve a cure for the woman, she must not have any kind of stimuli. This entailed taking away the woman's journals, her books, paper, writing supplies, and anything that would stimulate her mind. The problem with this is that it was making the woman even more anxious and desperate; after all, it is through writing and meditating that a cure to anxiety is more likely to be found.
The fact that nobody seems to "listen" to the needs of the woman is an allegory to the limited rights of women to care for themselves and have a position of authority regarding their own bodies, their own wants, and their own necessities. The woman was literally losing her mind by being left to her own devices in the upper room of the house, where even the yellow wallpaper was becoming an enemy in her book. Therefore, her predicament is that she is trapped physically and socially and that her family merely follows along with what "society" claims to know about women and apply it to the poor main character without thinking about it twice.