Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in 1860 on July 3 in Hartford Connecticut. As a child, her upbringing was not the best; her father left the family and Gilman’s mother was left alone to raise two children. Resulting from their splitting up, Gilman moved around constantly, and her grades in school suffered. Throughout her life, she was known as a writer and a social activist. In 1884, she married Charles Stetson, who was an American artist. Together, they had a daughter named Katherine. In 1900, Gilman married for the second time to her first cousin George Gilman; the two remained together until George died in 1934. In 1935, Gilman discovered that she had an inoperable form of breast cancer, which consequently lead to her suicide on August 17, 1935. Over the course of her marriage to Stetson, Gilman suffered from severe depression, which resulted in a series of medical treatments. Going through this experience is what is claimed to be the reasoning behind writing the most well-known of her short stories “The Yellow Wallpaper.” …show more content…
One of her most favored nonfiction pieces is Women and Economics. After, she also wrote The Home: Its Work and Influence in 1903 and Does a Man Support His Wife? in 1915. Gilman was recognized as a feminist, as her writings mainly dealt with controversial topics dealing with women; her desire for women was for them to gain independence in the economy. To express her feelings, she created The Forerunner, a magazine designed to spread her message. Issues of this magazine were printed from 1909 to 1916; this is where Gilman published most of her poetry, essays, and fiction works. Gilman’s literature broke new ground due to the feminist ideals. Women during her time were not looked upon in a positive light. Men were seen as the leader of the house and she did not feel that she could conform to these