In "The Yellow Wallpaper", a story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the conflict centers on the protagonist's inability to maintain her sanity in a society that does not recognize her as an individual. Her husband and brother both express their own will over hers, forcing her to conform to “an appropriate code of behavior for a sick woman.” She has been given a "schedule prescription for each hour in the day; [John] takes all care from me" (1213). This code of behavior involves virtually no expression of her free will. Rather, she is expected to passively accept the fact that her own ideas are mere daydreams, and only the opinions of the men in her life can be trusted. While "Wallpaper" presents a powerful argument in favor of the feminist movement, the true issue behind the conflict is the healthy mental state of a human in an oppressive environment.Obviously, it is impossible to maintain a healthy mental state in the oppressive environment surrounding the woman. Throughout the story, the author traces the woman's mental deterioration from a having a normal but weakened sense of self, to a complete inversion of her ego. She slowly inverts her orientation of her place in society, turning away from society completely in order to create a world where she can act on her own free accord. In order to represent the stages of her gradually worsening state of mind, the author represents the woman's struggles through a parallel with her view of the wallpaper. The wallpaper is at first a seeming inversion of the woman's mind, but it is eventually revealed to be a parallel, showing her transition from a weak-willed but outwardly focused wife to a strong-willed but internally focused individual. The wallpaper takes on immediate significance when it is introduced to the story, simply because its characteristics are described with such detail. At this point, the paper seems to represent all that is the opposite of the woman, and she is repu...
