In "The Yellow Wallpaper," discuss the social and physical "traps" the narrator has to endure, with supporting quotes.by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

One of the physical "traps" Charlotte Perkins Gilman
exposes—within her short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper"—is society's belief that men
could control the lives of women, with the assumption that women were too
fragile to deal with the real world because it caused them to be
overly nervous.

The speaker sometimes has her doubts about
her husband's prognosis regarding her state of mind, while at other times she believes
that all he does is out of love for her. Yes, he is a
doctor...

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...and
perhaps…perhaps that is one reason I do not
get well faster. You see, he does not believe I am
sick.

The unnamed narrator
states:

If a
physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that
there is really nothing the matter wiht one but temporary nervous depression—a slight
hysterical tendency—what is one to
do?

Unfortunately for our
protagonist, her brother—also a doctor— agrees with her husband. She is surrounded by
men who believe nothing is truly wrong with her, so she goes "untreated" other than to
be cut off from anything that might distract her and help her to feel better. She cannot
read or write, and is not allowed to even see her new
baby.

It is
fortunate that Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear
baby!

And yet I cannot be with him, it
makes me so nervous.

So the
social trap that catches the speaker is in a male-dominated society that asserts that
she cannot control of her own body, let alone her destiny. She is caught in a world
where men own their wives, make their decisions for them, and women
are fed the idea that this is normal and healthy. As an example, the Supreme Court
contended that...

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...states could withhold the right to vote from
women as they did from criminals and the mentally
insane.

Women—here—are placed
in the same category as criminals and the mentally insane. The narrator buys it: she
mentions several times how much her husband does for her, and how she hates to be a
burden to him. What is most daunting is that this woman is completely under her
husband's control; he exerts this power throughout the story. Economically and socially
she depends upon him, and he treats her like a
child. The only thing he cannot control, it seems, is her
sanity.

The physical trap is seen in the actual control
exerted over the speaker's body. Her husband does not "treat" her because he does not
believe she is ill. She is "kept" in a large room on the third floor of their rented
"summer retreat," that was once a nursery. With children in the room, bars were placed
at the windows for their safety. For our narrator, they seem more like prison bars. This
woman is expected to do nothing: she cannot read
or write. In terms of the physical, she has also asked her husband
to move her into a nicer room or take down the wallpaper. At first he agrees, but then
he decides to leave her in the room, with the wallpaper. We
read:

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…afterward he said I was letting it get the
better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such
fancies.

The wallpaper
becomes a focal point of this story. Leaving the paper represents her husband's
determination to control his wife. For her, its presence haunts
her:

…when you
follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance, they suddenly commit
suicide...the color his
repellent...

Then she sees
faces and eyes in the it. As she pulls it down, she becomes a part of it, creeping along
the walls, descending into madness.