The condemnation of a patriarchal society in The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman was astute. Taken at face value, her short work, The Yellow Wallpaper, is simply the diary of a woman going through a nervous breakdown. Wallpaper itself is the arbitrary object on which a troubled mind is obsessively fixated. The fact that Gilman herself suffered from a nervous breakdown makes this interpretation seem quite viable. This explanation, however, is completely wrong. Wallpaper isn't simply the object she obsess over. The madness that grips the narrator is not rooted in any nervous disorder diagnosed by her husband. The wallpaper is actually meant to represent a mold that all women should fit into. The madness is rooted in the narrator's inability to easily fall into that mold. Gilman's wallpaper descriptions are truly eloquent delineations of the restrictions and constraints placed on women. In short, wallpaper is what all decent women should be; the narrator is a woman who is unable to adapt and, therefore, becomes a madwoman. The narrator's first description of the wallpaper highlights most clearly what is believed to be the nature of women: "dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to irritate and constantly provoke study, and when they follow the lame and uncertain curves for a short distance they destroy themselves in unprecedented contradictions" (Gilman 4-5). Initially here women are depicted as confusing objects; so confusing that they are always annoying and yet curious enough to require "study" or examination. Upon further examination, the women are found to be "lame and uncertain curves" so full of contradictions that ... in the middle of the paper ... of the wallpaper and towards schizophrenia. It's easy to see how some might misinterpret what Gilman was attempting to express in The Yellow Wallpaper, but if you take into consideration her other books (which are clearly feminist), her intentions become more apparent. She obviously uses wallpaper as a means to expose the constraints placed on women in the 19th century. His attitude towards these restrictions is quite evident from the narrator's account of the wallpaper and his subsequent madness due to overexposure to it. He despises the general view of women and their mental abilities. This work rails against the belief system of a patriarchal society and, the funny thing is, not many of the patriarchs noticed. Work cited Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The yellow background. 1892. Alexandria, Virginia: Orchises Press, 1990.