The Yellow Wall-Paper & Unpunished

The Yellow Wall-Paper & Unpunished

Writing in satire and using the voices of female roles in her numerous works, Charlotte
Perkins Gilman proudly proclaimed her feminism.   Most of what she wrote, whether is was a
poem, a short story, a non fiction novel, or a fictional novel, showed the pride she had in strong women leaders.   Her stories found their way from her life experiences as supporting social motherhood, kitchen less homes, and women's economic independence.  
Gilman was born in 1860 in the tiny state of Rhode Island.   She was no stranger to the writing scene.   Her great aunt was Harriet Beecher Stowe.   When she was very young, her father abandoned her and her family.   Gilman's parents were a disappointment in her eyes, so when she was sixteen she devoted her life to the public service.   She felt she was one of the best to help out because of what she had been through, that she knew everything that was going on.   At the age of twenty six she had a nervous breakdown.   She was then married and had a child.   This breakdown caused her to write one of her best works, The Yellow Wallpaper.   This short story is about a woman that is forced to live in room with yellow wallpaper.   She becomes obsessed with the ugliness the wallpaper possesses and eventually loses her mind and sees someone in the wallpaper.   The woman is her, trapped inside the very thing she hates most.  
In 1894 Gilman was granted a divorce.   That same year she relinquished her rights to her daughter, Katherine, to her ex-husband.   The freedom that came with this allowed her to lecture around the United States and Europe.   During her travels she saw what she believed to be enslaved women that were met with hostility by many.   This earned her many feminist supporters.   In 1898 she published Women and Economic, which won her the title of   international celebrity.  
In 1900 Gilman was married again, this time to her first cousin, Houghton Gilman.  
Several books came out after she was wed.   From 1909 to 1916 she wrote for a...