Essay, Research Paper: The Yellow Wall-Paper & Unpunished

Writing in satire and using the voices of female roles in her numerous works, Charlotte
Perkins Gilman proudly proclaimed her feminism. Most of what she wrote, whether is was a
poem, a short story, a non fiction novel, or a fictional novel, showed the pride she had in strong women leaders. Her stories found their way from her life experiences as supporting social motherhood, kitchen less homes, and women's economic independence.
Gilman was born in 1860 in the tiny state of Rhode Island. She was no stranger to the writing scene. Her great aunt was Harriet Beecher Stowe. When she was very young, her father abandoned her and her family. Gilman's parents were a disappointment in her eyes, so when she was sixteen she devoted her life to the public service. She felt she was one of the best to help out because of what she had been through, that she knew everything that was going on. At the age of twenty six she had a nervous breakdown. She was then married and had a child. This breakdown caused her to write one of her best works, The Yellow Wallpaper. This short story is about a woman that is forced to live in room with yellow wallpaper. She becomes obsessed with the ugliness the wallpaper possesses and eventually loses her mind and sees someone in the wallpaper. The woman is her, trapped inside the very thing she hates most.
In 1894 Gilman was granted a divorce. That same year she relinquished her rights to her daughter, Katherine, to her ex-husband. The freedom that came with this allowed her to lecture around the United States and Europe. During her travels she saw what she believed to be enslaved women that were met with hostility by many. This earned her many feminist supporters. In 1898 she published Women and Economic, which won her the title of international celebrity.
In 1900 Gilman was married again, this time to her first cousin, Houghton Gilman.
Several books came out after she was wed. From 1909 to 1916 she wrote for a feminist
magazine. Between 1916 and 1932 Mrs. Gilman continued to write and speak out for what she most believed in. In 1932 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. When it was apparent that nothing could be done, Gilman began planning her own suicide.
On August 17, 1935, at the age of seventy five years old, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
inhaled chloroform and died a peaceful death in her home.
The life that Gilman lead was difficult one. A life filled with disappointment and
heartbreak. Her father abandoning her, and the incessant absence of her mother, made her want to help out with people as soon as she was old enough. Everywhere she went she saw women suffering because they were women. When Gilman wrote it was for women and the things that they can accomplish. Each story contains a woman with commanding power, and an interesting job to do. Gilman would be very proud of how far women have come in the world today.
Of Gilman's several selections I chose her novel Unpunished and a short story The
Yellow Wall-Paper. First I read Unpunished. Unpunished is a mystery about a murder. A rather unliked man was found at his desk with a cord around his neck, arsenic in his glass of whiskey, a knife in his back, a bullet in his head, and a bruise on his temple. There were many suspects, due to the man's bad reputation. A man by the name of Crasher tried to place blame on another man, claiming to have found evidence, but only ending up delaying the case. The main roles in this book are held by women, one of Gilman's many traits. After the complete autopsy, it is determined that the man was not murdered, but died of a coronary thrombosis. But who tried to "finish" him off? His servants later admitted to placing the cord around his neck, arsenic in his glass, knife in his back, bullet in his head, and hitting him on his temple.
The second selection I read was The Yellow Wall-Paper. Although it's only a 16 page
story, it has to be one of the best writings I have ever read. It begins when a woman that is not
completely right in the head moves into an old house with her doctor. The room she is put in to
was an old nursery with yellow wall-paper. To let the reader know what is going on in this
woman's head, the story is first person. Every day she writes in a journal, and that is what is
read. It doesn't take long in the story to realize that the paper is getting to the woman. When
she writes in her journal, it is only about the wall-paper and how much she dislikes it. Towards the end of the story she starts to see a woman in the wall-paper. Soon the woman starts walking around the yard and all through the house. What the woman can't see is that the person she sees is herself. She had become so obsessed with the paper that she got lost in it. On the final page she escapes. 'I've got out at last,' said I, 'in spite of you and Jane? And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!' Pg. 19 of The Yellow Wall-Paper and other stories by
Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
These stories are similar in fact that they both contain main female roles. This was
because of how strong she felt about women and their rights. Gilman would stop at nothing to
stand up for women and fight for equal rights. Charlotte Perkins Gilman had one way of writing,
and that was with flowing words and analogies. It would be easy to pick out her works and
know who had written them. Both stories had a strong theme, but other than that, they were
totally different, which is a good thing. It gave me something different to read, I was kept
interested longer knowing that each had a surprise ending and it wasn't something I had already heard of and could guess.