Gender Roles In The Yellow Wallpaper

Gender roles in marriage have long illustrated the inferior role placed on women, especially in their inability to choose their desired occupation and express their true feelings. The conventional, nineteenth-century, middle-class marriage typically exemplifies the roles of the domestic wife and the active working husband. This depiction of the “ideal marriage” is portrayed in many works of literature through a gender lens, which analyzes how the images of men and women in these literary works reflect the social forces that have historically provoked the inequality of the sexes. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the infantilization of women in marriage is distinctly exhibited through the narrator’s confinement to the domestic

Because of her husband’s constant patronization and misjudgment in the name of helping her, the narrator is reduced to a child-like state and is unable to stand up for herself without disobeying her husband; therefore, she retreats into an even worse state of mental health where she feels she is finally free. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator receives a great deal of mental and physical restraints in an attempt to cure her of her post partum depression. Instead of curing her, these mental restraints end up worsening her condition and driving her insane. Throughout the story, the narrator makes subtle notes of the unfair and demeaning expectations in a typical marriage. For instance, in the beginning of the story, the narrator mentions that her husband and brother have forbidden her to work until she is well again; and although she believes that work with excitement and change will improve her health, she can do nothing but obey