Women's Oppression and the Yellow Wallpaper The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a fictionalized autobiographical story that illustrates the emotional and intellectual deterioration of the narrator who is also a wife and mother . The woman, who apparently suffers from postpartum depression, seeks some kind of peace in her male-dominated world. She is given a "rest cure" by her husband/neurologist doctor which requires strict bed rest and an imposed withdrawal from any mental stimulation. As a result of her husband's controlling edicts, the woman develops an obsessive attachment to the intricate details of the wallpaper on her bedroom wall. The woman's increasingly intense obsession with wallpaper ultimately leaves the reader with many questions about nineteenth-century male-female relationships, and perhaps even madness. Several critics have identified many significant and conflicting themes in "The Yellow Wallpaper". For example, the contrast of the male-female relationship at the end of the 19th century, which constitutes an apparent link between sexual roles and apparently oppressive sexual structures. Another significant theme is the disturbing question of what lies behind the meaning of wallpaper structure and color. Does it represent a symbolic realm of images, or a linguistic realm centered on the identity of the spoken and written word? More sympathetic critics such as Gilbert and Gubar read “The Yellow Wallpaper” simply as a narrative of a woman's efforts to free herself from a structured psychic and social atmosphere: indeed, a rigidly constructed atmosphere that was very restrictive for such a woman. times. They imagined that the wallpaper was... in the center of the paper... Conn: Yale University Press, 1979. 89-92. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The yellow wallpaper”. From Heath's Anthology of American Literature. and. Paul Lauter, et al. DC Heath and Co. MA. 1994. 800-12.Herndl, Diane. “The Writing Cure: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Anna O., and Hysterical Writing” NWSA Journal no. 1 1988. 52-74.Hedges, Elaine R. “Afterward” to “The Yellow Wallpaper” Old Westbury, NY. Feminist Press 1973. 12.Jacobus, Mary. “A Useless Labyrinth of Sign Reading” Reading Women: Essays on Feminist Criticism. New York: Columbia University Press. 1986. 229-48. Kolodny, Annette. “A map for rereading: or the genre and interpretation of literary texts” Nuova storia literarya 11, n. 3 1980. 451-67Treichler, Paula. “Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature. 1984. (75).