Essay On Gender Roles In The Yellow Wallpaper

Throughout the Victorian period, gender roles for men and women were strongly specified. Men were the ones that always went to work and provided for the family, whereas the wife was to stay home all day to take care of the domestic duties. Author Charlotte Perkins Gilman in her story “The Yellow Wallpaper” points out the gender role in the time that the story was written and how women were underestimated, seen as fragile things, and always followed their husbands word to be considered as acceptable for the society. The story talks about a woman suffering from postpartum depression, that her condition is made worse because her husband is not aware that the condition is a medical one. Throughout the story Gilman shows that John the physician of his own wife tried to help the wife with her condition, but at the same time he fails to notice how critical her condition is and denies her the

The narrator says that: “It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don't like it a bit. I wonder -- I begin to think -- I wish John would take me away from here”. The woman starts to imagine that there is a living woman trapped inside the wallpaper that is trying to tell her something, but this scares her and she wishes and silently begs for John’s help. The narrator continues to state that: “At night in any kind of light,.... it becomes bars! The outside pattern I mean, and the woman behind it is as plain as can be”. The obsession of the wallpaper drives the woman crazy, she stays up at night because in the night light she can see the trapped woman and can figure out her secret. How was she trapped in there and how she can free her? During the day the woman is able to catch some sleep because the woman in the wallpaper stays still and make no sudden