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 “
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.
Through the narrator's descriptions of the wallpaper, Gilman effectively conveys both the narrator's growing realization of the restrictive nature of societal expectations placed upon women and the broader societal limitations, thus reinforcing the central thesis of women's lack of autonomy and agency in, calling the yellow wallpaper, “One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (Gilman 587) and “dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions” (Gilman 587) and “repellant, almost revolting: smouldering unclean yellow” (Gilman 587). The descriptions of the wallpaper as committing artistic sin, dull, provoking, repellant, and revolting reflects the narrator's growing realization that the societal expectations placed upon women are restrictive and devoid of meaning. The wallpaper's twisting patterns and the narrator's obsession with it resemble the societal attempts to confine and control women's bodies and choices. This depiction also mirrors the suffocating reality experienced by women like
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.
Can you imagine being trapped in a room with walls that seem to close in on you, all while being suffocated by a yellow wallpaper that haunts your every thought? Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" brings this eerie reality to life, drawing on her own experiences and beliefs to create a gripping tale that challenges societal norms and delves into the history of mental health and gender roles. Through its vivid portrayal of a woman's descent into madness, it delves into themes of feminism, mental health, and gender roles. One influential approach to understanding this literary masterpiece is through biographical criticism. Perkins Gilman's own life and beliefs shaped "The Yellow Wallpaper," examining her personal struggles with
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 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.”
The dystopian story “The Yellow Wallpaper” analyzes the struggle for equal rights of women and their quest for freedom. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story shows the idea of equality and treatment of women in the late 1800’s. The story explores the intense impact of status and power on rights of gender and mental health. This is shown in several ways throughout the story by John, the narrator’s husband who imprisons her, and the environment in which the narrator is placed in. These elements throughout the story exemplify the inequality of women and the control held over them by men at this time.
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
