Free at last

Ms. Charlotte Perkins Gilman has demonstrated through The Yellow Wallpaper how the unequal power of gender affects her sanity as well has her writing. Through her tone and vivid descriptions of her summer confined in a bedroom, Gilman desperately tries to balance sanity with reality. She notes that her husband cares for her health and tries to provide a domestic life for Gilman. John, however, does not fully understand that Gilman is indeed descending into psychosis. Because of this, she is deemed an unreliable narrator- a powerful convention that plays well in the short story. And because John forbade her to go outside, Gilman deliberately disobeys and keeps a journal. Isolated with barely any companionship, her writings are fruitful as she talks about the inanimate objects of the mansion: "I never saw so much expression in an inanimate thing before, and we all know how much expression they have (1533)!" As the summer progresses, she focuses more on the dreadful wallpaper. With every entry, she discovers something new about it which displeases her enough to believe there is an actual woman on the wallpaper creeping upon her. When she is freed from the bedroom on the last day, she also frees the woman on the wallpaper by tearing it off. Metaphorically, she has also freed herself from her husband and his practice as a physician.