Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1860. She was married at age 24 when she became deeply depressed and ordered to bed rest. This only worsened matters when she divorced her husband and began writing and speaking in California, where she eventually died in 1935. I think that this short story tells a lot about Charlottes mental breakdown. It was a way for her to get all that was running around in her head out, before things got worse. I think she was trying to tell the world that mental illness could not be ignored. You cannot act as if you lead a normal life that it will just go away.The characters are the most important part to this story because that is where the focus is placed. The main character is a woman obsessed with the wallpaper in her summer home. At first, it was a perverse fascination with the unique color and distinguished smell that lingered all through the house, a smell that she could not rid herself of. She had spent hours trying to figure out what this smell. I think this shows the obsessive behavior she had extremely well. It defines the character perfectly. Then this attraction turned into hallucinations of people running around underneath it, which drove her mad, until she tore down every shred she could get her hands on stating that she was the one inside the wallpaper and that she had finally made it out. After this, I believed she killed herself by hanging in front of her husband, which proves that this character had no way out in her mind. I think that the author develops the character well enough to understand her insanity.What seemed to help her get through this ordeal seemed to be her writing, which I think could be the theme. The fact that insanity in her case is because of her husband. Doctors stated that this kind of behavior would only make things worse. By not letting her write made her worse. She now had no outlet of the things going on inside her. With t...
