How did Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s experience with puerperal mania (post-partum depression) affect her writing of “The Yellow Wallpaper”?

In "The Yellow Wallpaper," Charlotte Perkins Gilman embeds a number of symptoms of postpartum depression (PPD) into her narrator. While this can be difficult to pick up on while reading the story for the first time, things become more clear as the story moves toward its climax.First, Gilman's narrator and her husband have rented an ancestral hall for the summer, in an effort to get away from their daily lives. Initially, the reader may assume this is meant to be a vacation, as her husband suggests, but even early in the story the narrator refers to the house as "haunted," suggesting,

I will proudly declare that there is something queer about it. Else, why should it be let so cheaply? And why have stood so long untenanted?

Here the narrator displays a high level of concern and anxiety about the house. Anxiety is often a symptom of PPD. Further, when talking about her desire to write, she mentions that it "does exhaust [her] a great deal." Exhaustion is yet another symptom of PPD. However, despite clear indications that something is wrong, the narrator's experience is invalidated by her husband: a doctor who follows the methods of Silas Weir Mitchell. Mitchell was the developer of the "rest cure," which is essentially a belief that if a new mother shows signs of depression, she should rest as much as possible. Activities such as reading and writing are often forbidden, as they are believed to be too taxing for the woman in that particular mental state. It should be noted that the narrator mentions she must do her writing in secret, because her husband has forbidden it.These are just a few of the instances in which Charlotte Perkins Gilman embeds the very real experience of PPD into her narrator. The story works as a cautionary tale to any and all who would discount and invalidate the experiences of the unwell. Because the narrator does not receive the help she clearly needs, her mental state declines. In the end, she breaks free of her ills, but it costs her her sanity.