Research Paper on:
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper and an Infantile Narrator

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
doctors and the intellectuals. Women were seen as nothing more than children at best. And, perhaps the only thing they were able to do was be simple wives and mothers.  Bearing these facts in mind we look at Gilmans story and examine how she was seen as an infant to her husband and brother, and the male community. We examine  how the story explains her condition, and why she is in this position. Narrator as Infant As mentioned, women were thought capable of little during the time that  Gilman wrote this story. All the scholars and all the medical professionals were primarily male. As such they had no understanding of women at all. They did not know, truthfully,  that women were capable of just as much as men. So, when a woman acted different, when she did not act like they thought she should, she was seen as  insane, or just sick with "spells." The narrator in Gilmans story was suffering from a nervous breakdown. She was stressed and confused as it related to her life. Because  of her "condition" her husband and brother decided that she should go to the country and "rest." She says of her husband and brother, "If a physician of high standing,  and ones own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression--a slight hysterical tendency-- what is one to do? My  brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing" (). We can see that she knows she has no power, and thus is  clearly in a position that is not much more independent than an infant. Her husband feels she needs the nursery for she cannot make decisions on her own. She