The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman And The Social Norms Of Women

Jacey Christopher

Final Research Paper

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Social Norms of Women and Women’s Mental Health in the 19th Century "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a late 19th-century narrative that portrays the struggles faced by women within a society defined by oppressive gender norms. The story revolves around the narrator’s confinement in a room with yellow wallpaper, which symbolizes the confining nature of patriarchal expectations. Gilman's specific descriptions of the wallpaper's color, texture, and patterns create an image of the narrator's confinement and the suffocating reality she is forced to endure. The yellow color represents the absence of women's autonomy, while the meaningless

This theme resonates strongly with the arguments presented in the article, by Lauren MacIvor Thompson, "The Reasonable (Wo)man: Physicians, Freedom of Contract, and Women's Rights," which explores the struggles of women experiencing suffrage and a lack of bodily autonomy and agency during the same period. Both the article and “The Yellow Wallpaper” highlight the distrust and resistance women exhibited towards the medical establishment. The article states, “women's vocal distrust of both the medical and legal establishments became even more apparent in the ways that reformers such as Mary Ware Dennett and Margaret Sanger pushed back against hostile (or at the least, indifferent) physicians and legislators who sought to keep contraception illegal.” (Thompson 804). Reformers like Mary Ware Dennett and Margaret Sanger faced opposition from physicians and legislators who aimed to keep contraception illegal. The narrator's confinement and lack of control over her own body in the story symbolize the broader struggle faced by women in a society that seeks to restrict their reproductive autonomy. The mention of “women’s vocal distrust” shows the vocal resistance of women against oppressive systems, backing up the narrator's silent rebellion against the patriarchal

Through the narrator's descriptions of the wallpaper, Gilman effectively conveys both the narrator's growing realization of the restrictive nature of societal expectations placed upon women and the broader societal limitations, thus reinforcing the central thesis of women's lack of autonomy and agency in, calling the yellow wallpaper, “One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (Gilman 587) and “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” (Gilman 587) and “repellant, almost revolting: smouldering unclean yellow” (Gilman 587). The descriptions of the wallpaper as committing artistic sin, dull, provoking, repellant, and revolting reflects the narrator's growing realization that the societal expectations placed upon women are restrictive and devoid of meaning. The wallpaper's twisting patterns and the narrator's obsession with it resemble the societal attempts to confine and control women's bodies and choices. This depiction also mirrors the suffocating reality experienced by women like