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Essay On Gender In The Yellow Wallpaper

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Gender in the Yellow Wallpaper By Clinton/Lewinsky 2016

The yellow wallpaper is a compelling book about a woman going crazy and tearing off the yellow wallpaper off the wall. At first glance, this seems like a bad book written by an unstable person who was obsessed with wallpapers. However, this is not the case, and with closer analysis the book is about critiquing gender constructs in society. First of all, gender in that society was based on keeping women down and letting men be superior in modern society. Women weren’t encouraged to be in the workforce and men were generally in positions of power.
In the time period, this book was made which was the 1890’s women were discriminated against, however, women made gains towards gender equality in this time period. According to Kate Chopin from loyno.edu, “The Matrimonial Causes Act in 1857 gave …show more content…

The premise of this short story is to illustrate women breaking away from societal constructs that held them in social inferiority to men. Obviously, women were just as capable of work and jobs that required higher intelligence but during this time period, women were deemed “incapable” of doing these jobs. In the yellow wallpaper, the husband is a doctor and represses the will of the woman to have freedom. According to the Bureau of Labor statistics, women’s participation in the labor force was only 5 percent, however, this way even lower for women trying to work in fields as a professional like a doctor. Throughout the story, the woman became more and more upset with being in the room and finally tore down the yellow wallpaper that symbolizes her oppression as a woman in modern society.

In conclusion, we see that this story tries to illustrate the oppression of women during this time period by using a clever allegory then breaking down the societal constructs that held them inferior. In contrast, this was during a time period in which women were fighting to break oppression and gain the rights they

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