"The Yellow Wall Paper"

I believe the theme that Gilman was trying to portray i this story was how greatly women were suppressed and limited in the 19th century, and how they were taught to accept it. The narrator is apparently "sick" with nervous depression and other mood habits. Even though she seems fine and desires to get out, her husband and brother, who are both doctor's, force her to stay in this terribly wall-papered room. They make her believe that she needs rest and the real world would make her conditioned worse, and that women belong in the house anyhow. The whole story is written in perspective of the women, through her journals. She is under the impression she must hide her journal from everyone, especially her husband, since it is only "feeding," her disorder. Though she is controlled by the men in her life, and almost a prisoner within the room because if them, all she continues to say is how good they treat her. This shows that most women of that time believed hey were the weaker sex, and played into the social norms of letting them men tell them what is right and wrong. The narrator almost lives in fear, not only of letting her husband see her write, but not coming off as appreciative, or obedient to him. Even though she was being kept from the world, and her child, she was convinced it was all for the best. in the end, the room and the wall paper ended up making her actually mentally and psychologically insane, at least more then she was in the beginning of the story.