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The theme of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” is what can happen when you let someone else control your life. In this story, the wife becomes mentally ill because she lets her husband control her life and as the story progresses you can see that her condition worsens because she does not think for herself. This theme is revealed through the wife by her writings in her journal about her and her husband, her imaginations in the yellow wall-paper, people that she imagines, and the moment she goes completely insane. It is shown in the wife’s journal entries about her and her husband, just how much she lets John control her life. One example of this is when she writes, “I…am absolutely forbidden to work until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas…I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good” (153). She obviously has her own different opinions but never speaks of them openly, she only writes them down in her journal. This is why her husband controls her so much because she does not fight back about her own opinions. She