When you first read the feminist gothic short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper", written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, you might assume that it is a short story about a woman trying to save her sanity while undergoing treatment for postpartum depression. Gilman herself had suffered from postnatal depression and was encouraged to undergo the "rest cure" to cure her hysteria. The treatment Gilman prescribed gave her an experience very similar to that of the narrator in the story. The “perfect rest” (648), which consisted of forced bed rest and isolation, provided the inspiration for “The Yellow Wallpaper.” This story, which involved an unreliable narrator, became an allegory for the repression of women. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman illustrates the isolation and oppression of women in nineteenth-century society by connecting female captivity, social and mental status, and isolation to the objects in and around the room. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is written in the first-person narrative of a woman's secret diary and her descent into madness. With the 19th century medical community misunderstanding and mistreating women, despite women's protests. The care that John, the narrator's husband, offers does not help at all, in fact over the course of the story the narrator's diary enters and her condition progressively worsens. Spending the summer in an abandoned mansion recovering from what her doctor husband believes to be a "temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency" (648). Her husband doesn't believe her illness is serious, the narrator states: "See, he doesn't believe I'm sick" (647)! As the story goes, men thought they knew better than women, especially “hysterical” women. ......middle of paper......money to support yourself. Many of them felt trapped, as if behind the horrible yellow wallpaper. They were expected to have a domestic life, oppression was present inside and outside the home. The color yellow is prominent in the story, it is a vibrant color that is often used to symbolize life and energy. The use of the bright yellow color contrasts the narrator's feelings. The narrator realizes that herself as a woman is becoming a woman liberated from the oppression of the yellow wallpaper, which represents Victorian society. At the end of the story, when the wife refuses to leave and the husband faints, she symbolically steps over his body to freedom. The images featured in "The Yellow Wallpaper" show the narrator's slow spiral into madness. The images along with the oppression and isolation felt by the narrator lead to the madness that ultimately sets her free.