How does the character in "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, experience social struggles?

The experiences of the main character in Charlotte Perkin
Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," are based on the author's personal
experiences with post-partum depression.

This was not a
recognized illness, as it is today, and the woman in the story suffers the diagnosis of
a society that is ill-prepared to deal with what they do not
understand.

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Most modern commentators now interpret the story
as a feminist indictment of society's subjugation of
women...

After having a baby,
the medical community relies on what they know; they advise the young
mother...

to
abstain from any and all physical activity and intellectual stimulation. She is not
allowed to read, write, or even see her new baby. To carry out this treatment, the
woman's husband takes her to a country house where she is kept in a former nursery
decorated with yellow
wallpaper.

Reviewing the
quote above, we note that the woman is "kept in" a former nursery. In other words, she
is restrained or imprisoned in this room. She is not allowed any sort of diversion, not
to read or even see her baby.

At the start, where the woman
seems most healthy, she has spirit, and tries to defy her
seclusion:

I
did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a
good deal—having to be so sly about it, or else meeting with heavy
opposition.

However, she is
also a product of her society. The things that she wants are not provided, but instead
of insisting, she feels ungrateful. She is also controlled by her husband—a doctor—as if
she is incapable of making the simplest of decisions.

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He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me
stir without special direction...he takes all care from me, and so I feel basely
ungrateful not to value it
more.

The woman's husband
makes every decision for her, even to the point of allowing that since
he sees no problem, that she has no reason to
be concerned.

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[John] knows there is no
reason to suffer, and that satisfies
him.

As the speaker continues
to describe her limited activity (of secretly writing), and her husband's refusal to
change her room, but assurances that in a few weeks she will be well, the woman begins
to imagine that she sees things in the wallpaper: like eyes—everywhere, and fungus. And
when she infers to John that perhaps she is better physically, but not in
other ways, he won't listen to her, but dismisses the entire
idea.

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Reviewers...maintain...that John's treatment of
his wife represents the powerlessness and repression of women during the late nineteenth
century.

This is a story that
not only describes a young woman's descent into mental illness, but a society
(represented strongly in her husband) that refuses to give credence to the woman's
concerns. She becomes fearful of her husband and paranoid. She imagines that the smell
of the paper moves through the house, and imagines that the pattern moves because "the
woman behind the pattern shakes it!"

John's refusal to
listen to his wife, his complete certainty in his own power to "fix" his wife, and his
inability to see what is happening to her mental health lead to his wife's belief that
she has become a part of the paper. When her husband finally sees how far her illness
has gone, he faints...and she continues to creep around the room, leaning against the
wallpaper, climbing over his unconscious form every time she
passes.