Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is my students’ favorite. This short text is filled with rich symbolism, and I’ve extensive research on it to share with my students.  For your interest only, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Western Ontario, I had to take a course called Feminism and Hysterical Literature – yes, Hysterical Literature.  There is a body of literature called Hysterical Literature – most of them write about the oppression of females in a patriarchal society.  The Yellow Wallpaper was on our list of studies, and we looked at the text from the perspective of feminism and the western history of hysteria.  We examined the power relationship between doctors and females - sick hysterical females.  The premise is that the entrapment of females were what had driven them crazy.  To learn more about the motive behind writing The Yellow Wallpaper, Students should read Gilman’s “Why I wrote the Yellow Wallpaper,” which can be found on my site.