A Woman Indefinitely Plagued The Truth Behind The...

A Woman Indefinitely Plagued: The Truth Behind The Yellow Wallpaper In The Yellow Wallpaper, a young woman and her husband rent out a country house so the woman can get over her â€Å"temporary nervous depression.† She ends up staying in a large upstairs room, once used as a â€Å"playroom and gymnasium, [†¦] for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.† A â€Å"smoldering unclean yellow† wallpaper, â€Å"strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight,† lines the walls, and â€Å"the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes [that] stare at you upside down.† The husband, a doctor, uses S. Weir Michells â€Å"rest cure† to treat her of her sickness, and he directs her to live isolated in this strange room. The†¦show more content†¦The overall goals of womanhood included remaining passive and modest in all situations. During Gilman’s lifetime, women’s rights activists began to act out against The Cult of Domesticity, but socie ty simply shunned them. Gilman came from a long list of fighters for women’s rights, including her aunt Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Having this strong background affected more than her mindset about women’s roles; it also affected her interpersonal relations that she had with her husband and what role she expected to fulfill. From the beginning she struggled with the idea of having to conform to the domestic model for women. Gilman rejected repeated proposals; she stated that â€Å"her thoughts, her acts, her whole life would be centered on husband and children. To do the [writing] she needed to do, she must be free.† She finally married Charles Walter Stetson at the age of 24. Not even a year later in March 1885, Charlotte gave birth to her first child, â€Å"but feelings of ‘nervous exhaustion’ immediately descended upon her, and she became a ‘mental wreck.’† Now known as Postpartum Depression, this was the affliction tha t fell upon Gilman. Doctors of the time had little knowledge about the female hormonal system, and all nervous disorders were associated with â€Å"hysteria,† a reference used for women with emotional problems. Gilman’s writing was an effort at expressing the