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Gender Roles In The Yellow Wallpaper

1102 Words5 Pages

Avery Swinimer
Mrs. Donck
ENG4U
4 April 2023

Revealing the indifferences of gender roles within Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story that tells the tale of a woman suffering from postpartum depression and her descent into madness. Her physician husband decides that the only way to cure her “temporary nervous condition” is to be deprived of any form of stimulus at a summer home. Through the implementation of literary devices such as mood, tone, and symbolism, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper uncovers the inequalities of gender roles and the oppression of women during the nineteenth century.
In the short story, Gilman uses the narrator's …show more content…

At the beginning of the text, the narrator says “Personally, I disagree with their ideas… I believe that congenial work would do me good” (Gilman 648). This inner dialogue illustrates that at the beginning of her stay, she believed she was okay and just needed to keep herself occupied with her passions such as writing; however, her husband insisted that she needed treatment for her “nervous condition”. This demonstrates that the narrator is subject to the opinion and decisions of the men in her life and that she has no other option but to obey them and their commands. At the end of the story, the narrator then writes “‘ I've got out at last,’ said I, ‘in spite of you and Jane? And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!’” (Gilman 656). This quote shows how the tone of the story went from optimistic to madness and how the narrator has completely dissociated from herself. She believes that she has escaped as her husband no longer has control over her. As the tone of the story shifts, it becomes evident that the oppression from her husband leads to the mental deterioration of the …show more content…

The narrator's husband says “‘My darling,’ said he, ‘I beg of you, for my sake and for our child's sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?’“ (Gilman 652). The husband begins to use their child as a means of informing the narrator that her role as a woman is defined by motherhood and if she cannot fulfil those duties then she is failing society. The baby cements his belief that she is not well as she is unable to care for it. The narrator says “I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes at night, and that is hard!“ (Gilman 656). In this quote, the narrator is referring to the wallpaper which she views as prison bars. During her time in this room, she realised that she is trapped not only in the estate but in her role as a mother and a wife. The narrator wants to escape from her duties and become her own person however, her stay in the room has her convinced that this is her life now due to her husband's constant reinforcement of gender roles and the oppression she faces. Through the use of simple objects such as wallpaper and a child, the author creates a world where men

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As the narrator becomes more fascinated with the wallpaper she moves progressively away from her normal day-to-day routines and lifestyle. When the narrator finally recognizes herself as the woman trapped in the wallpaper she screams at her husband "I 've got out at last," (Gilman 656) "you can 't put me back" (Gilman 656). She realizes woman are forced to hide behind the internal patterns of their lives and they need that she needs to be

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He put her in a room, the reeked of yellow. During the 19th century, women were to listen to their husband, and they also had the power to determine the health of their wives. She wasn’t permitted to write, on the grounds that he needed her to “rest”, but she secretly does so anyway. The room makes the woman so insane and in the wake of understanding

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She slowly starts to fear her Husband, she notes how there is an odd smell that accumulates in her room, and she always references the yellow wallpaper, in that it changes in certain ways. She began to comment on how some parts of the wallpaper was torn, then she progressed to how there were bouts of fungus growing on the walls until she begins to speak of how the pattern on the wallpaper shakes because of the “woman behind it.” “Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over,” this is when her sanity is clearly broken. She moves on from talking about her husband, the daylight, and the room itself to only speaking of the women and how she moves around. This clear descent into madness is a byproduct of how she is often dismissed by her husband and brother concerning her

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The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman reveals the medical community's mistakes of generalizing treatment and unfair treatment of women. The Yellow Wallpaper is about a woman who has been assigned the “rest cure” by her husband who is a doctor. Her brother, who is also a doctor, agreed with her husband’s decision. This cure is supposed to deal with her postpartum depression.

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The bed in her room may represent her inability to leave the bounds of her own thinking, while the barred windows stand for her lack of independence as she is locked in a prison cell. The narrator’s imaginative descriptions of the room’s suffocating environment, from its “air of hush and secrecy” to its “queer odor”, build the sensation of psychological tension as the story goes on, making the reader more sympathetic to the narrator’s situation and circumstances. The narrator also goes in-depth about the issues of female oppression and the silence of women's voices in a patriarchal society using effective imagery that helps her get her point across. Symbolism At its core, the yellow wallpaper embodies the protagonist's deteriorating mental state and her gradual descent into madness. Initially described as "unclean" and "revolting," the wallpaper's vibrant yellow hue and labyrinthine patterns mirror the protagonist's fragmented psyche and a growing sense of

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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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Women were thought of as weak and unable, and they did not question a man’s authority. Through the development of this story, it shows how passive women with postpartum depression were treated poorly and it resulted in mentally ill patients rather than healthy ones. The ever changing tone, vivid imagery, and ironic situations all show how the woman comes to understand who she is. The narrator in this story comes to the realization that she is the woman in the wallpaper she has envisioned- trapped in this world by her own husband. To break free of this entrapment, she ripped off all the wallpaper so no one could put her back into her horribly vivid

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During the three month stay at the mansion, Jane constantly debates her inner thoughts; the need to be the woman she was expected to be, versus having the freedom she longs for. Jane begins to hallucinate about a woman trapped behind the yellow wallpaper that covers the walls of her room and subsequently has a mental breakdown. One can conclude, that the cause of Jane’s breakdown was the oppression she suffered at the hands of her husband.

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Though she is unaware of it, she was responsible for the damages to the bedstead. In addition, her changing perspective on the wallpaper indicates her becoming increasingly unreliable. At first, she states that” This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern…a particularly irritating one.” (The Project Gutenberg eBook of the Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman). As she spends more time in the nursery as part of her treatment and less time partaking in more stimulating activities, she starts to see the pattern as a living woman.

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Her circumstance is completely controlled by her husband John, a physician, who refuses to consider his wife’s condition an illness. She is left helpless, as he controls where she sleeps, what she eats and what she can do. Because of this, she becomes imprisoned in her mind and loses her sense of self and reality within the four walls. Insanity builds as her mind is entangled by the wallpaper that lines the nursery, and as she begins to identify with the women behind the bars of the wallpaper. Her mind is entrapped only until she tears down the wallpaper to escape the imprisonment.

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As this progresses, the woman starts to go mad from ignorance and starts to believe there is someone behind the Wallpaper. In her room, the narrator starts to obsess over the Wallpaper. The Wallpaper symbolizes women starting to realize how unfair they were treated and how responded to this. As the women’s illness keeps getting subdued by her husband, she starts to go mad and the wallpaper demonstrates this. In the third entry of her diary she says, “Of

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The dystopian story “The Yellow Wallpaper” analyzes the struggle for equal rights of women and their quest for freedom. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story shows the idea of equality and treatment of women in the late 1800’s. The story explores the intense impact of status and power on rights of gender and mental health. This is shown in several ways throughout the story by John, the narrator’s husband who imprisons her, and the environment in which the narrator is placed in. These elements throughout the story exemplify the inequality of women and the control held over them by men at this time.

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She begins to slip away from reality and into her dreamlike world. The woman seen in the wallpaper mirrors the narrator 's plight for freedom. While she is free from the restraints of marriage and motherhood, she has been consumed by madness. John dominates the relationship, both as doctor and husband.

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Nevertheless, on a night that John was not home, the narrator and the woman in the wall struggled all night and morning to get her out but were unsuccessful. After hours of trying, the narrator became desperate, desperate enough to “come out of that wall-paper” herself and confront man while urging other women to do the same (Perkins Gilman, 58). The story ends with John fainting right across the narrator’s path of the wall after she says “I’ve got out at last...you can’t put me back” demonstrating that she has challenged the American culture of inherited oblivious misogyny and conquered promoting the equality of sexes

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman was not just an author but a great feminist. Gillam inspired countless women to seek indecency with her work like "The Yellow Wallpaper. " The story is a fictionalized short story of a woman who is descending into madness while dealing with her mental illness and cannot heal due to her husband 's lack of belief. At the same time, the woman also known as the narrator feels imprisoned in her marriage. The story takes place during a time were women and had no independence and were not able to voice their own opinion.

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