Secondary Sources

My primary source is of the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  

For my secondary sources, I am still looking for a book to use, but I have three articles I am thinking of using: Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper, with links for the primary symbols and images by Viola Garcia, The Changing Role of Womanhood: From True Woman to New Woman in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Deborah Thomas, and “The Yellow Wallpaper”: An Autobiography of Emotions by Charlotte Perkins Gilman by Kelly Gilbert, all from the website http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/gilman.htm#Contents which is of the American Literature Research and Analysis Web Site.  I would like to look further for articles/books about hysteria, and/or the book The Madwoman in the Attic.  I am going to use these articles to analyze more in depth the symbols of the book; I want to use the book(s) to detail the issues surrounding the "rest cure."

The Yellow Wallpaper

     The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story published in 1892 about a woman with depression who journals without her husband's knowledge.  We as readers are never told specifically what she is afflicted by, but we can assume that it is some form of depression - possibly post-partum depression - as she mentions her new baby a few times.  The context is of this woman's husband wanting to heal his wife, but through arrogant means.  He treats her as a child and looks down on her as a woman, and she is naiive to this type of treatment, rationalizing by saying it's how her husband loves her and treats her kindly.
     Meanwhile, she is not allowed to recieve any sort of stimulation, believing it would overwhelm her and cause her to fall more into her illness.  She occupies her mind by desperately trying to figure out the pattern within the yellow wallpaper that decorates the room she needs to stay in.  She also writes without her husband's knowledge.  She eventually becomes obsessive to a point where she becomes unstable.
     If we look closer, there is much symbolism between the wallpaper and the patterns she finds within it, and her own self within her mind and marriage.  The varying symbolism fascinates me, as does just the story itself.  The sociological issues that arise within the context of publication, and the psychological issues within herself creates a fascinating dynamic.