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Gender Roles In The Yellow Wallpaper

2012 Words9 Pages

Katrina Wagner
Professor Lawrence
English 101B
5 July 2023
Gender in “The Yellow Wallpaper” “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written in 1892 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The late 1800s was a time where women greatly struggled with equality and finding the same freedoms as men. Women’s struggle with oppression is one main theme that Gilman highlights in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” This theme was a very big issue during this time period, and while a lot has changed, this can still be seen commonly today. Charlotte Perkins Gilman discusses her own experiences with finding medical help during the trauma of postpartum depression. Gilman develops this theme through her complex character development, unique writing styles, and language strategies. Looking …show more content…

Although this story shows the harsh reality of depression, the story almost has a dystopian and nervous tone to it. The audience sees a woman go crazy and see things in wallpaper. The text states, “It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house-to reach the smell. But now I am used to it. The only thing I can think of that it is like is the color of the paper. A yellow smell” (Gilman 444). This quote is one of many examples of how the narrator is focusing on tiny details that drive her insane. This gives the story a dystopian tone because it sounds so odd that no normal person would ever behave like this; only someone truly suffering or crazy could have thoughts like these. It is true that the woman is feeling crazy, but she only feels that way because of her …show more content…

One way the author shows the character’s anxiety is by using personification. Gilman brought the wallpaper to life as a manifestation of the narrator’s anxiety. The narrator thinks, “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. Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spot she takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard” (Gilman 444). These thoughts directly show how the isolation is changing the emotions of the narrator. When they first arrived at the rental house, she could admit that it was frustrating to be alone, but as time went on, she didn’t feel alone anymore. She may have been anxious about loneliness or depression, causing her to see things in the walls to keep her company. The wallpaper was obviously not alive, but the narrator saw it move. The way Gilman wrote this story contributes to the theme because if it wasn’t for the power dynamic between the narrator and her husband, none of this would have happened. If the woman had enough power to be herself and leave the house, she never would have seen a woman moving around in the

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She proceeds to explain the contributing factors of the narrator succumbing to her “disease” of hysteria which was isolation from social interaction and the restriction of her own thoughts. She points out that the narrator is confined to a simple square room with nothing to offer in terms of mental health therapy. The narrator’s lack of the ability to interact with anything or anyone leads to infatuation with the wallpaper, which turns out to be “the

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She becomes obsessive over the woman in the wallpaper, theorizing that the wallpaper moves because of the woman, and assumes that the woman can escape from the wallpaper. At the end of the story, the narrator locks herself in her room and throws the key to ensure that she will catch the woman in the wallpaper. When her husband John unlocks the

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Throughout the story, her own concerns for her mental health are diminished and written off as simply nervousness that will eventually go away. The lack of proper care for her and her involuntary confinement to the room with the yellow wallpaper eventually causes the woman to end up in full psychosis, characterized by hallucinations of a woman trapped within the paper. The woman seen within the paper not only represents the actual woman’s need for a voice to give her freedom but also her inability to escape the constraints of the patriarchal standards being imposed upon her. It is not until she completely loses herself to the delusions and finds herself tearing down the wallpaper that she feels she has escaped her own husband’s constraints. Gilman uses symbolism in the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” to convey that within a world with insane standards and rules, a woman’s only reasonable option is to go insane

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She writes in her journal describing the wallpaper, “The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.” Gilman introduces the yellow wallpaper, which serves as the story's primary focus. The yellow wallpaper reflects the idea of the patriarchal society, which they view women as weak. The yellow wallpaper also symbolizes both the protagonist's internal conflict with herself as well as her external conflict with society's expectations of what it means to be a woman. As the story progresses, she becomes more obsessed with the wallpaper, spending her days staring at it trying to make sense of the patterns and designs.

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The wallpaper becomes a symbol of the narrator's own mental state. She describes it as "dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide--plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions. " This description mirrors the narrator's own mental state, which is confused and erratic.

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She becomes obsessed with the patterns of the wallpaper, but she mainly notices a woman that she thinks is trying to free herself from the confines of the wall. During the day this woman is still, but when night time comes around, it seems as though the woman creeps around. Towards the end of the story, the narrator has a breakdown and thinks that she is this woman inside of the wallpaper, and begins to perform similar actions like creeping around. This meaning of this scene is simple cause and effect. Not only did she already have postpartum depression, but she is basically trapped in this house for a whole summer with nothing to do so she can heal.

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In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the female narrator is greatly troubled by the suppression of her imagination by her husband and her ultimate isolation due to this subordination. These feelings are reflected through the author’s use of setting as the narrator’s dreary and malicious descriptions of the house and the wallpaper mirrors her emotional position. Throughout the reading, the reader is exposed to the narrator’s in-depth loss of touch with reality as she sinks further and further into her own reality. As she becomes more isolated, her descriptions of the house become more abstract as she begins to focus on the wallpaper and starts to see herself as being hidden behind it.

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Women in the 1800’ and early 1900’s were treated the same as slaves, second class citizens who had no voice or decision over their lives. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 with a late American 19th century setting. The main character, a nameless woman, fights depression and anxiety along with being oppressed by her husband John and wanting to rise against the norms of

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However, we later see a shift in her feelings towards the wallpaper as she states that she is growing “really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper” and comes to a realization that it may be “because of the wallpaper” (Par 94) As her opinions on the wallpaper begin to change, the progression of her mental instability becomes increasing visible. She begins to build a relationship with the wallpaper and claims that “There are things in that paper that nobody knows about” (Par 22) her. As this relationship with the wallpaper builds, her sanity begins to slip, and the hallucinations begin in a somewhat minor manor. In her first mention of “the woman” she says that the pattern on the

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The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story full of imaginative symbolism and descriptive settings. However, without the narrator’s unique point of view and how it affects her perception of her environment, the story would fail to inform the reader of the narrator’s emotional plummet. The gothic function of the short story is to allow the reader to be with the narrator as she gradually loses her sanity and the point of view of the narrator is key in ensuring the reader has an understanding of the narrator’s emotional and mental state throughout the story. It’s clear from the beginning of the story that the narrator’s point of view greatly differs from that of her husband’s and other family in her life.

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The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 shows mental illness through the narrator first hand. The theme in this story is going insane verses loneliness as well as being trapped. These themes are shown through the main character (the narrator of the story) as she works through her own mind, life, and surroundings. First, the theme of the woman’s state of mind is the main focus in this story.

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Enclosed to the four wall of this “big” room, the narrator says “the paint and paper look as if a boy’s school had used it” because “it is stripped off” indicating that males have attempted to distort women’s truth but somehow did not accomplish distorting the entire truth (Perkins Gilman, 43). When the narrator finally looked at the wall and the paint and paper on it, she was disgusted at the sight. The yellow wallpaper, she penned, secretly against the will of men, committed artistic sin and had lame uncertain curves that suddenly committed suicide when you followed them for a little distance. The narrator is forced to express her discomfort with the image to her husband, he sees it as an “excited fancy” that is provoked by the “imaginative power and habit of story making” by “a nervous weakness” like hers (Perkins Gilman, 46). Essentially, he believes that her sickness is worsening and the depth of her disease is the cause of the unexpected paranoia.

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Gender Inequality: A Woman’s Struggle in “The Yellow Wallpaper” In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman captures the lives of women in a society based on societal expectations during the late nineteenth century. She focuses on the issue of gender inequality where women were often discriminated against and expected to fulfill the role of a perfect wife and mother. The narrator is based on on Gilman’s personal experience of suffering from her treatment for postpartum depression due to the social restrictions on women which represents a reflection on women's social status in society. The narrator, who remains anonymous, is depicted as a depressed and isolated prisoner who is oppressed under her husband’s control and struggles to break free.

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"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows the pain women had to go through to be heard. The whole story demonstrates Gilman 's view on feminism through the male and female dialogue in the. As well as the symbolism of the yellow wallpaper itself and the imprisonment its captured. One can learn from the story that gender roles should be removed as they can cause a feeling of imprisonment and psychological struggles on women, as well as women, should live

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From the beginning of the story, the narrator claims there is something queer about the house (Perkins 380). Throughout the story, she voices her concerns about the house. She claims she can “feel” something strange about the house (Perkins 380). The narrator believes that the paper looks at her with viciousness (Perkins 382) and says that it has eyes everywhere. She also infers that there are things about the wallpaper that only she knows about and they come into focus more each day (Perkins 380).

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