An autobiographical tale, "The Yellow Wallpaper" details Charlotte Perkins Gilman's personal battle with depression and the disastrous "Rest Cure" treatment she received. Living during the restrictive Victorian Age and the "golden age of hysteria," Gilman experienced firsthand the frustrating limitations placed on women in her era, many of whom were victimized by society's complete misunderstanding of postpartum depression and other psychological maladies. Gilman, however, was born into a family of outspoken women. Her great-aunts Catherine Beecher and the novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe both championed social causes of their era. Two generations later Gilman proved equally outspoken. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is Gilman's attempt to show the ill effects of cultural restrictions and forced inactivity on women's lives during the late Victorian age.
Women's roles and rights. The Victorian Age, which began in Great Britain with Queen Victoria (who ruled from 1837 to 1901), had a profound impact on social values in the United States-particularly on the values associated with women. The Victorian ideal stressed female chastity and innocence and held that a woman's ultimate roles were those of wife and mother.
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