Intriguing things like madness, hallucinations, paranoia, and depression are all traits that make a story memorable and interesting. But there is not only madness contained in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Through the use of an unnamed narrator, Gilman describes how women of her time were trapped by social barriers. The innocent and apparently wealthy opening of the story with a mentally "ill" woman cared for by her doctor husband constantly digresses into a struggle so that she can escape her bonds and gain her freedom, her social equality. The narrator is described as suffering from a "nervous depression, a slight hysterical tendency". The treatment for such a condition in the 1890s was complete and absolute rest without any physical or mental excursions. The recommended treatment in the narrator's words is "...absolutely forbidden to 'work' until I am well again." He won't have to do anything, not even dedicate himself to one of his favorite activities, which is writing. However he writes, but secretly. As described in this line from the story, “I wrote for a while in spite of them; but it makes me very tired to have to be so astute about it, otherwise I will encounter heavy opposition.” Although following a doctor's orders to cure an ailment is not unusual, the way her husband, her doctor, ignores her and treats her with contempt demonstrates the social structure between men and women, husbands and wives during this era. Men were seen as the breadwinners, the backbone of society, while women were seen as the weaker sex, mothers, wives, almost pseudo servants if not treated as true servants. Women were supposed to be housewives, mothers, to love and obey their husbands. Women possessed few rights and did not share… half the paper… ration women had to deal with these social boundaries along with the growing feeling of breaking free from them. The narrator of the story essentially frees himself from these constraints. When she tears the wallpaper freeing the trapped women and finds herself imitating the actions of the trapped women. The narrator stalks around the room seeking her own escape from her yellow-wallpapered prison. Although the story does not tell what happens after the family leaves the house, it describes how the narrator reacts to her husband fainting, falling in her path as she wanders around the room. She walks around or over him. This symbolizes what would eventually happen in society. Women would become free; they would receive equal rights and opportunities. They would, figuratively and literally, climb over or go around the men who had held them back.