yellow wallpaper
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The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a serious story narrated by a young woman driven to insanity by a husband that imposes a "rest cure" for her sickness, although he believes that it is only "temporary nervous depression" (Gilman, p.361). We learn that the woman suffers from a problem with depression, this problem is very similar to the one Gilman had in real life. The conventional course of action to take in the narrator's case was the one of nothing. I mean literally, nothing. For the narrator was considered hysterical and slightly depressed and there was only one course of action for such symptoms. That was one of complete rest. In those days the "rest cure" was very popular. It involved being set apart from anything that might have even the remote possibility of stress in it.
The main character (whose name we never learn) of the Yellow Wallpaper was indeed set apart from all activity as directed by her husband John...