The Yellow Wallpaper

I felt Perkins Gilman was attempting to change the way woman were treated, especially those with a mental illness or depression. In the Yellow Wallpaper the main character is kept locked away in their summer home while her husband goes out and works. John also refuses to get her treatment, which part of it was because he was a doctor but i also wondered if maybe that was because it would be looked down upon. Admitting to society that your wife has an illness was probably not good for societal status. "If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression-what is one to do?" (p.355)
This story also points out how the man of the house usually has the last say in what happens. As i pointed out John decided that his wife did not need to seek help. In the Wide Wide World Ellen's father decided she would leave early in the morning and that Ellen was not to find out ahead of time. In Desiree's baby Armon made the decision that his wife was unworthy and that she should go to her mothers. In the Hidden Hand, Capitola was always being controlled by men, because she was living in a man’s world.

It seems that all the stories we have read, whether the man is a crucial character or hardly seen at all, he always has the final word on what’s going to happen. Perkins Gilman really emphasized this point in The Yellow Wallpaper.