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Motherhood In The Yellow Wallpaper And I Stand Here Ironing

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The concept of motherhood and the role of women have existed since the beginning of time and throughout various points it has differ. There is no limit to what can be considered motherhood. To one person, motherhood might mean the act of raising children and taking care of their family, and to another; motherhood might be what defines them as a person. This is seen in Tillie Olsen’s short story “I Stand Here Ironing” and the “Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In both stories, the main characters were dealing with the struggles of motherhood and being a wife. The main character in the story, “I Stand Here Ironing” was a single, working mother raising five children at the time. She was caring and providing for her children, while back then it was a man’s job to do so. The main character in “The Yellow Wallpaper” was suffering from depression after having her baby. She felt as if she could not care for her newborn as she is supposed to, so it brought her into a deep depression. The short stories, “I Stand Here Ironing” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” are both stories told by women who felt that their responsibilities as a mother were …show more content…

Both stories have common situations about the mothers portrayed in the stories. In both stories, the main characters had to deal with abandonment in some form. As seen in the story “I Stand Here Ironing”, the narrator’s husband left and caused her to play both roles of being a mother and a father to her children. Therefore, the relationship between her and her daughter isn’t as strong as it should be and the narrator feels guilty about it. The main character in “The Yellow Wallpaper” blames her husband for her depression. Her husband isolated her from others and her child, which caused her condition to worsen because she felt that she couldn’t care for her family as she

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The short story, The Yellow Wallpaper was written by a lady named Charlotte Perkins Gilman. “Charlotte was a young lady born in the 1860s right into poverty. Her upbringing was in poverty and didnt have it very easy at a young age. She was born in England and at the age of 22 she married a man by the name Charles Walter Stetson. They eventually had a child and almost immediately right after the birth of the child Charlotte fell into a deep depression.

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The narrator is a woman who is imaginative trying to make her mind think and realize the meaning of the yellow wallpaper. She describes the wallpaper as, “repellant, almost revolting; smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow turning sunlight” (Gilman 641). This specific wallpaper makes the narrator feel a certain way. At first, she does not like the color or how it looks. But then not having anything else to do in the room, she starts examining the wallpaper.

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Charlotte Gilman’s short story, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, (1899) is a text that describes how suppression of women and their confinement in domestic sphere leads to descend into insanity for escape. The story is written as diary entries of the protagonist, who is living with her husband in an old mansion for the summer. The protagonist, who remains unnamed, is suffering from post-partum depression after the birth of her child and is on ‘rest’ cure by her physician husband. In this paper, I will try to prove that ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ acts as a subversive text by portraying the protagonist’s “descent into madness” as a result of the suppression that women faced in Victorian period.

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Despite its dull, ordinary setting, “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen is an extremely deep short story covering complex socio-economic issues spanning over two—very eventful—decades. The story shows how economic hardships could physically alter the stereotypical gender roles, while cultural traditions kept them mentally intact. When these two elements contradicted each other, they left women, like Tillie Olsen’s character, feeling emotionally responsible for the consequences. Although her husband left her and she was forced to assume the role of both the breadwinner and the homemaker at only nineteen years old, she blames herself for neglecting what was thought to be her primary duty as a woman: motherhood. As the reader can tell from

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The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story told through diary entries of a woman who suffers from postpartum depression. The narrator, whose name is never mentioned, becomes obsessed with the ugly yellow wallpaper in the summer home her husband rented for them. While at the home the Narrator studies the wallpaper and starts to believe there is a woman in the wallpaper. Her obsession with the wallpaper slowly makes her mental state deteriorate. Throughout The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses many literary devices such as symbolism, personification and imagery to help convey her message and get it across to the reader.

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The yellow wallpaper is not just the dreadful décor the narrator is stuck within the story but the most important symbol in the story. It symbolizes how women were not allowed to change or free to make their own decisions. The narrator once said that the wallpaper "sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it" (Gilman). She felt like the wallpaper stuck and not able to succumb to change she demonstrates this as well when she says "The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out" (Gilman). The narrator herself became the women she saw in the wallpaper that she felt trapped in a life without change which manifested itself into the wallpaper further increasing the symbolism and importance of yellow wallpaper.

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