Repression in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Yellow Wallpaper: Repression "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Gilman is sad story of the repression that women face in the days of late 1800's as well as being representative of the turmoils that women face today. Gilman writes "The Yellow Wallpaper" from her own personal experiences of having to face the overwhelming fact that this is a male dominated society and sometimes women suffer because of it. The narrator, being female, is suffering from a "temporary depression". She states right from the beginning that "John is a physician, and perhaps--(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)-- perhaps that is the one reason I do not get well faster." The narrator sets up the story to convey a certain opinion of the repercussions a woman faces in the care of a man. She obviously loves her husband and trusts him but has some underlying feeling that maybe his prescription of total bed rest is not working for her. The story mentions that she has an older brother who is also a physician and concurs with her husbands theory, thus leaving her no choice but to subject herself to this torment of being totally alone in this room with the yellow wallpaper. She stares at this wallpaper for hours on end and thinks she sees a woman behind the paper. "I didn't realize for a long time what the thing was that showed behind, that dim sub-pattern, but now I am quite sure it is a woman." She becomes obsessed with discovering what is behind that pattern and what it is doing. "I don't want to leave now until I have found it out". The narrator with absolutely nothing else to do is reduced to staring ... ... indeed imprison the woman because you have no way of knowing what has happened before or what is to come. We imprison her more because we make judgments of a thirty second clip that could possibly affect our bias for the movie or the story itself before we have a chance as an individual to read the story or watch the movie. As a female in 1995 reading this story, I had this overwhelming desire to free this narrator from her husband and the rest of the males in her life. She wanted company, activity and stimulation. Which any woman of that time or this time should be freely allowed to have. Gilman did an outstanding job of illustrating the position that women of that time, and to an extent, of this time as well, hold in their society. This story should hold a place in every woman's heart who is struggling to find her place.