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Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

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Throughout Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” there are many aspects of critique towards the treatment of women in 19th and 20th century marriages. During these times men were seen as the superior sex, being in charge of everything and in many cases oppressed women including their own wives. There are many different viewpoints on what the wallpaper represents and what its true hidden meaning is during the story. The wallpapers symbolism increases throughout the story, it starts out as being very unpleasant but as the narrator begins to see things in this wallpaper it becomes evident that the wallpaper represents the domestic life that she and many women find themselves trapped in. As the story progresses the critique toward the treatment of women during the 19th and 20th century increases. One way that the …show more content…

In the story Gilman writes “But nobody could climb through that pattern-it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads.” (317). This shows that the wallpaper symbolizes the oppression that women during this time faced on a day to day basis. The lady trying to climb through the pattern but not being able to relates to women trying to be independent of men but failing during the 19th and 20th century. This led to women feeling trapped in a world controlled by men that they can not escape, which his expressed through the symbolism of the wallpaper. In Jürgen Wolter’s essay he states “The wallpaper had trampled upon her, and now she tramples upon him and it.” (205). The wallpaper trampling upon her symbolizes her husband having complete control over her life, and now that she has torn down the wallpaper she becomes free from his oppression. This supports the idea that the wallpaper represents the fact that all women were being trapped and oppressed by men during this

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Critical Statement: In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman employs exclamatory functions within her syntax to display the symbolism of the woman within the wallpaper to illustrate her own constricted freedom due the influence of the masculine dominance. In the beginning of the story, Gilman illustrates the wallpaper as a catalyst for exhibiting the intensity of the narrator’s psychological disorder. After the narrator and her husband settle into their new house, the narrator inspects her room, and begins discerning ominous relations and elements within the wallpaper.

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The Narrator’s disdain for the situation she is in is clearly shown through how she tells her story. As her insanity grows deeper, the wallpaper is described as a prison, something that has a sub-pattern whose “dim shapes get clearer every day. […] And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern” (Gilman). This life that The Narrator has been born into is not one that she fits into, so she identifies with this hypothetical woman trapped behind a metaphorical wall of femininity.

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Everything that the wallpaper represents take the story deeper and allow the reader to actually understand the woman’s situation. While reading the story, the reader learns that this story is told through a diary the woman used to vent. After being left alone in that awful room, the woman is very bored and lonely, so she decides to write in it. At the beginning of the story, the woman is prescribed a “cure” for her “problems.”

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457 Words | 2 Pages

In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Gilman critiques the restrictive nature of patriarchal society through the bars in the female narrator’s bedroom window that represent her relationship with her husband. As the narrator’s mental health deteriorates near the end of the story, she recognizes that the bars on her window physically confine her to her room. She states that “To jump out of the window would be admirable exercise, but the bars are too strong even to try” (Gilman 1694). Thus, Gilman clearly reveals to the reader that the narrator desires freedom but is kept in her room by the bars on her window. These bars directly relate to the narrator’s relationship with her husband, John.

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The wallpaper initially appears as a mere aesthetic detail in the room where the narrator is confined. However, as the story progresses, the wallpaper takes on a deeper significance, becoming a symbol of the narrator's oppression and confinement. The narrator becomes obsessed with the wallpaper, spending hours analyzing its patterns and finding disturbing images within

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1233 Words | 5 Pages

Gilman defied the idea of domesticity and gender roles through writing, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which is what makes this story so influential for women in

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3394 Words | 14 Pages

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

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961 Words | 4 Pages

In Charlotte Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman challenges the unjust patriarchal social system that enforces bias gender roles during the 19th century: wives are forced into oppression by the unrealistic concept that their husbands all know best in all aspects of life and marriage. The text is designed to be read from a feminist viewpoint and is originally published in a woman’s magazine. Gilman utilizes her targeted subjects to help begin an uproar in the feminist movement to help women’s voices to be heard to break the patriarchal dictates set to hold women back by men. Throughout the short story Gilman utilizes the narrator’s feelings of pent up anger towards her own domestic role as a prisoner instead of living in a

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1343 Words | 6 Pages

The woman behind the patterned wallpaper was an image of herself – she had been the one stooping and creeping. Additionally, she knows that there are several other women in similar situations as hers, several that she is fearful to glance at. The question she asks in this quote is gripping, complex, and underlines the purpose of Mrs. Gilman’s story: Must all of them struggle the way I did? Were they trapped within homes that were actually prisons? Need they all turn their lives upside down to be free?

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1139 Words | 5 Pages

However, the yellow wallpaper is also her liberator, as the narrator sees and understands to an extent the woman and the patterns in it. When staring at the paper, she muses, “There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will” (119). The yellow wallpaper in this case represents oppression that forms in conceptual ways, such as laws, culture, and general emotions or ways of thought. These are methods of oppression that the narrator cannot physically see or maybe even comprehend.

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751 Words | 4 Pages

The wall paper represents a cage and the so called women in it’s stuck and can’t get out of it and only man has the key to unlock it. Over all, some women in this time frame felt like they were treated as little caged “birds” almost and they could not escape the path that their husband set out for them. That was probably stay at home, cook, and cleaning. That does not seem like a fun life to live for the rest of their life while the men got to do whatever they wanted back then according to the quote. Finally, the mysterious wallpaper is a perfect representation of what women must have felt like in the 1800’s.

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396 Words | 2 Pages

In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman a woman with a so called “nervous condition” is very distressed by the yellow wallpaper in the room she is confined to. The symbolism of the journal, the room, and the wallpaper is what really brings a deeper meaning to this story. On the surface, the story seems to be about a woman who ends up going insane. However, the oppression of women is brought out through the incredible symbolism in this story.

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388 Words | 2 Pages

Throughout The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman utilizes women inferiority in marriage in order to demonstrate the gender separation between women and men, thus divulging women being confined in a puerile mentality. The story conveys the idea of representing women as inferior to men; by having the concept of a “domestic” woman and an “active working” man. Gilman manipulates the scenery in order to reveal the hidden actions of men’s denial towards women’s equality. Men limit women by having women live inside a box thus effecting their mentality state. The narrator views marriage in a certain way which allows for her opinions to be disregarded.

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677 Words | 3 Pages

The narrator does not recognize the similarities between her imprisoned state and the life of the woman in the yellow wallpaper. Ultimately, the wallpaper is a symbol of confinement in the narrator's life, as she wants to “get that woman out.” Correspondingly, the narrator finds it difficult to believe that the situation the woman

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1731 Words | 7 Pages

This could be a symbol of the discrimination that women go through, and that it can only be seen under particular circumstances, and during certain times. When the story mentioned the main character’s destroying the wallpaper and walking over her husband, it most likely symbolizes as freedom. Even when she broke the glass ceiling it can be seen as women trying their best to break free, and away from the discrimination. There is a line in the Yellow Wallpaper that states "But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!" I feel like in this part of the story, it’s trying to explain, how other people are seeing that women are trying to step up and change everything, and the women in the story is trying her best to find the best possible solution in order for men to realize women should have the same choices and rights.

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