The Oppression Of Women In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

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. Muckrakers Ray Baker, Ida Tarbell, and Lincoln Steffen exposed political corruption. In that case, Gilman is considered to be a progressive muckraker because in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, she portrays gender

Knowing she is breaking his trust, she still intends to keep intact John’s expectations of her as the obedient wife. “There comes John, and I must put this away, -- he hates to have me write a word” (Gilman 4). Later she implies that her husband hates to have her write a word. Perhaps John was not comfortable with his wife working because women are not meant to work. This then develops an outward profile of marriage that serves John’s logical perceptions of her as a wife and what she should be. He also includes ways in which she differs from the archetypal woman he thought he had

Gilman investigated what went on in the progressive era within gender inequality. After gathering evidence of how women were treated in their marriage, she wrote her book “The Yellow Wallpaper” to educate readers on this obnoxious idea of separate spheres ideology, where the husband is to control, and the wife is to obey by his rules. In her book, she wrote a fantasy of a single woman from the progressive era. By using just a single woman she was able to explain in detail how all women were treated because that one woman from Gilman’s fantasy represented many women from that time period. When looking back at the book that Gilman wrote and re examining the quote, “Investigate, educate, legislate”, it seems blatantly obvious that Gilman was a muckraker. She investigated the men and how they treated the women because of the men’s higher standing, she was able to educate by writing a fantasy story about one woman when that one woman represented almost every woman in the progressive era. Lastly she was then able to legislate because as you can see in our society today, there really is no one dominant gender and there certainly aren’t very many different gender roles in our society. Men and women are treated equally in today’s society. I’m not saying that Gilman’s story was the reason why