For decades, critics have viewed Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," primarily in a feminist manner, focusing on how women acted and how they were treated in the 1800s. Even if feminist criticism has good points, it could be deepened by psychoanalyzing it, because feminism is more in the 1800s, when women did not have the roles they have today. today, examining the psychoanalytic effect the restrictions had on them, and observing the effects the play had on her. “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written at a time when the primary role of women “was that of wife and mother, keeper of the house, guardian of the moral purity of all who lived in it” (Hartman ). Their husbands told women what to do and their thoughts weren't that important in the 19th century. Women were in a sort of “imprisonment” controlled by all the men. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Jane, the main character, is a woman suffering from postpartum. Jane's husband is a doctor who doesn't think there's anything wrong with her, and because of the passage of time, Jane hasn't been able to get her husband to understand that there really is something wrong with her. I didn't go to her house. “John laughs at me, of course, but that's expected in marriage” (Gilman). John was mentally taxing Jane by isolating her and thinking there was nothing wrong with her. Although feminism fits Gilman's story almost perfectly, it does not complement the modern critique of "Yellow Wallpaper." Today, women play a more important role in life in general. Women have well-paying jobs, work on farms, have their husband's cook for the family, and manage other men. Women who never knew how women were treated in the past may not view Gilman's short story in a feminist way. If the...... middle of paper......no. Jane is really no freer at the end of the story than at the beginning. In fact, we can assume that the intensification of her mental illness will only lead to her suffering even more at the hands of the same patriarchal power whose (mis)diagnosis defined her mental illness in the first place (Treichler 67). Her role in highlighting the fact that social oppression helped both create and sustain what might have been a less tragic illness is an accomplishment that, after all, only the reader, not Jane, can appreciate. So this is how “Yellow Wallpaper” can be criticized more through psychosis and not just feminism. Works Cited Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The yellow wallpaper.” An introduction to literature. ED SylvanBarnett. Longman: Boston, 2011. Print: “The Yellow Wallpaper” Feminist critique. »Teen Ink. Np, nd Web. April 28. 2014.