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Charlotte Perkins Stetson Create Repressions In The Yellow Wallpaper

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Repressions in “The Yellow Wallpaper”

In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, the narrator and her husband John help express a variety of themes addressing marriage, gender roles, and gender discrimination. The short story starts with the narrator and her husband moving into a colonial mansion for the summer. They do this to improve the narrator’s health. Stetson does not tell the readers what the narrator’s illness is; however, from the story it appears as if the narrator is mentally unstable and nervous. With the narrator’s health worsening she appears to grow obsessed with the distasteful yellow wallpaper in her room. In reality, Stetson uses the narrator’s obsession with the yellow wallpaper as a symbol for numerous …show more content…

I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said what I felt was a draught, and shut the window,” (Stetson, 648). The quote is an example of an interaction between the narrator and her husband that she retells the readers. The narrator starts off by telling readers that she felt there was “something strange about the house.” Here, in these lines, John denies how the narrator feels by saying “what [she] felt was a draught.” He refuses to listen to how the narrator actually feels, and instead imposes his own thoughts on her. The narrator, who still disagrees, cannot argue against her husband because he is the authoritative figure in their marriage. By doing this, John is confiding the narrator in their marriage.
Examining both themes in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” shows that themes are closely related if not intertwining. Since the narrator, who is a female, is oppressed by her husband, it is easy to say that themes address oppressions in marriage and gender. Stetson helped express these themes through symbolism with the wallpaper and through her characters and their interactions. These themes and interactions, however, overlap with one another or can be interpreted in different ways. This leads readers to interpret the themes of the “The Yellow Wallpaper,”

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