Analysis Of The Yellow Wall-Paper

For centuries, society has placed women into a lesser standing than men, but why is this? In Kate Austin’s “Woman,” women are so innately bound to men and their role as a mother, that they are never given equal opportunities directly leading to women’s subordinate role in society. In “Letter to the Women of England,” Mary Robinson asserts that society has regarded the female psyche as less than that of the man’s. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” is a story of a secluded woman who is forced by the men in her life to do nothing but sit in her bedroom, and her slow descent into a madness caused by an obsession with the yellow wallpaper and her postpartum depression. Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” examines how mental health,

Having children often tends to be more stressful for the woman than it is be for the man. The woman becomes highly attached, because they must put much more work into having a child. Between childbirth and taking care of the infant, women have much higher parental investment. Having a child can affect the woman’s psyche. In some instances, the woman has to deal with postpartum depression. This was true for the narrator in “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” The narrator states, “It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous.” (Gilman 77). The narrator is currently unable to take care of her own child, one of her main responsibilities in life, because of her postpartum depression. Motherhood has been the cause of her mental trauma, and said trauma makes it difficult to fulfill her maternal duties. With her inability to take care of her child, she has even less of a role in the family than she previously held. In “Woman,” Kate Austin discusses how men gained their higher standing because of maternity. She states, “ A woman will bear anything for the sake of her children. The maternal instinct to stay with the young, to guard them from danger, to lay down even life itself is a great law of nature that no mother can resist.” (Austin 2). Because women are so dedicated to their children, they miss out on opportunities that men receive, and being a mother becomes the woman’s sole identity. This dedication to motherhood continues to keep women in a subservient role in