Occupational Need

In The Yellow Wallpaper, I found the subject of women's sanity was interesting. The narrator struggled with postpartum depression as do many women still do today. However, the way women are viewed have changed with time. Charlotte Perkins Gilman presents the idea that women need something to do, to fill their time so that they do not go insane. Women are not to be patronized or thought of as just a lovely wall flower, or a shell of person. The narrator had difficulty getting her husband to believe that she was not feeling better mentally, and she really had nothing to do there at the house and needed an escape from the room with the "yellow wallpaper." However, John did not listen to her because of course women do not know anything. Gilman was making a point that women are human beings just as men are and need an occupation otherwise they may go insane; women need to have a purpose in life. Women's sanity as exhibited in The Yellow Wallpaper hangs by a thread; they cannot sit around doing nothing, anyone would be likely to go insane or to make up strange stories about strange things as the narrator did in the story. Part of her insanity came from her illness which was both mental and physical. The narrator's postpartum depression added to the need of occupation for a woman because the rest may have helped her physically but by prolonging the visit it affected her mental health in a negative way. She began to see herself trapped behind the wall of the yellow wallpaper; this made it clear that Gilman was making a societal comment on the role women play. Women must not be treated as a subservient, she is an equal and deserves rights just like everyone else and that she should not be forced to hide who she truly is just because whoever she truly is might not be what is accepted in society. This story just hinted at the changes that need to be made in society and that were yet to come. As women still have similar hardships with health like postpartum depression we now know how to combat it. Gilman's want for women to not have to hide who they truly are otherwise they might go insane eventually came true. At least in the American society, the majority of women do not face the same treatment as the narrator did in the story and have occupations to keep ourselves sane and constant in the person that we are.