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In the Yellow Wallpaper, is trying to make points about how women were treated by men and medical professionals at this time. Women were not necessarily treated with respect and they would often have their opinions dismissed. She is trying to make the point that women’s needs and opinions need to be addressed just as a man’s world. In the story, Three Thanksgivings, Gilman is trying to show how women can be strong willed and independent if they choose even if others do not see it. This is represented by the main character, Mrs. Morrison, deciding not to give in and lose her house and her independence.
Essentially, it is the physical and subsequent metaphorical entrapment of the female protagonist by her husband in The Yellow Wallpaper that leads to a loss of her identity. In addition to physical descriptions, a sense of identity can be established through the delivery of relationships with others, and moral beliefs. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the interplay of characters plays a key role in defining the narrator’s identity through the imbalance of power in her marriage with John. Gilman arguably presents the narrator’s descent into madness through her inability to create a new identity counter to John’s entrapment of her.
She uses a figure and the “horrid” wallpaper as analogies for women and men, respectively. The figure is trapped behind the wallpaper and struggles to get out and to be seen and the wallpaper does everything in its power to keep the figure from emerging. Just like how most men didn’t want their wives to think for themselves and if they did, they couldn’t show it. The men did everything they could to keep the women from breaking free of their bonds and telling the world what they thought. Soon enough Gilman becomes this figure and breaks free of the wallpaper claiming “
Evidence suggests that Gilman based “The Yellow Wallpaper” off her own life. In 1884, Gilman happily married Charles Walter Stetson but soon became distant and depressed. Stetson was very overprotective and affectionate which caused her depression to severely worsen, and ultimately caused their marriage to end. As Carl N. Deglar states in his article, “Her illness became more severe, however, and ended in a total nervous collapse” (39-42). This is likely where Gilman got the theme of oppression when writing “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
Interpretive Analysis of “The Yellow Wallpaper” The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story about a woman and her husband's efforts to cure her unexplained mental health symptoms. The narrator is isolated in her home, far from the outside world and her husband's attempts to control her behavior. Throughout this story, Gilman highlights the insubordination of women in marriage, in which the husband has all the power, and the wife is left with no power or voice.
Even though The Yellow Wallpaper symbolizes gender norms overall, it puts the perspective of how much authority men have over women and how the women could not handle it mentally. The main character believes she is sick, however, her husband John who is also a physician says she simply has temporary nervous depression (her brother who is also a physician says the same thing.) Within the story, Gilman includes some pieces that hint that John neglects his wife’s feelings such as “I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a DRAUGHT, and shut the window.” and “And I know John would think it absurd. But I must say what I feel and think in some way— it is such a relief!”
More often than not, traditional cultural norms are oppressive towards females, resulting in restrictions on their individual progression. In certain cultures, it is expected that women stay in their “proper social sphere”, which focuses primarily on childcare and domestic tasks. Consequently, this sphere causes major limitations in the activities that women can and can not take part in, thus affecting their individuality. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman illustrates the narrator as a hopeful woman, subjected to the rule of a male-dominated society and forced to undergo the rest cure because of her mental illness. While the story progresses, the woman grows restless as she pleads for other methods that may help cure her of her hysteria.
Perkins Gilman has written several stories surrounding the women’s movement. In The Yellow Wallpaper there have been main points surrounding the main characters feelings and thoughts about the wallpaper. There have also been main points concerning how the feminist approach has been used in The Yellow Wallpaper. Questions have arisen when discussing how the women in the story were being portrayed. Feminism is having the same rights as men and being viewed as someone who is important in life.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses naturalism as evident through her characterization of characters as victims from forces beyond control and as caricatures of animalistic behaviors to make her point about the oppression of women in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” In this piece of work, the main character is struggling with a form of depression likely imposed from her oppressive husband and society. While trying to explain her illness to her husband, who is a physician, she is basically dismissed as being hysterical and having nothing wrong. She continues to seek support from her husband only to find opposition. She enjoys writing and seeks intellectual stimuli as possibly helping her with her melancholy, but is only turned against it by her husband,
Gilman’s narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is battling several interwoven conflicts throughout the text. If one of these internal or external struggles been resolved, the conclusion of the short story could have been different from the final mental deterioration at the end. Conflicts faced by the narrator within “The Yellow Wallpaper” include her declining mental health, her husband’s dismissal and neglect of her concerns about her mental state, and her inability to perform the gender roles assigned to woman living in the early 1900s. The severity of the narrator’s mental state is developed throughout the whole of the story.
As the narrator continues her writing, there is also evidence pointing towards a theme of self expression. The narrator describes how she enjoys the relief of writing, however she feels she has to hide it from those around her, as though her self expression is not allowed or at the very least frowned upon. The character develops to the point of full hysteria, losing her self control and sense of reality in order to discover her understanding of her state and position in the world. Setting plays a large hand in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Upon moving into the new home, the narrator gives detailed descriptions of her dwelling.
As we look at marriages in today’s day and age, it is difficult for a man to be more dominant over his wife. Women are allowed to work in any profession they choose, and do not need to rely on a man for money. However, centuries ago in the progressive era, men were superior and dominant over their wife. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s novel “The Yellow Wallpaper” portrays this type of image where a woman is controlled and trapped in her marriage by her husband John. In this era, they considered articles exposing issues like this as muckraking.
The protagonist of The Yellow Wallpaper anthropomorphizes the floral elements of the yellow wallpaper, wherein wallpaper is typically a feminine floral decoration on wall interiors. These elements signify the scrutiny Victorian society makes of lives of its womenfolk, particularly of women who are creative and insubordinate to their spouses. The protagonist is one such woman; her writing denounces her imaginative character and the surreptitious persistence of her writing denounces her matrimonial and feminine disobedience which were considered radical in her contemporary society. Gilman expresses the suppression felt by women from societal scrutiny to be one of “strangling”, through the narrator, who in one instance describes the wallpaper pattern like so: “it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads… the pattern strangles them off and turns them upside down, and makes their eyes white!” Her anthropomorphizing of the pattern of the wallpaper adopts a grimmer facet when she writes that “when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide.”
She wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” in an effort to open the public’s eyes to the unfairness of this treatment. By infusing Jane’s narrative with childish language and actions without ever actually calling “Jane” by her name, Gilman creates a universal experience any woman of the time could insert herself into. This allowed women to fully realize the injustice they faced. John’s belittlement of Jane also serves to create both a universal and eye opening experience for the women reading it. Additionally, for those who were willing to read into the symbolism, the nursery and the meaning underlying it added to the injustice Gilman conveys.
She identified the yellow wallpaper as a metaphor for women’s discourse. The narrator’s underlying feelings of confusion, depression, and frustration was covered by the yellow wallpaper which she rips from the walls at the very end to reveal “what is elsewhere kept hidden and embodies patterns that the patriarchal order ignores, suppresses, fears as grotesque or fails to perceive at all” (35). The yellow wallpaper is interpreted as the conflict of gender inequality and the struggles of women in a patriarchal society. The imagery reflects on how women feel toward sexual inequality and the situation with
