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The Yellow Wallpaper Essay

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The theme of Women as Prisoners is shown in the setting of the story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The first level of this imprisonment is the location of the hereditary estate that the characters husband rents for her “rest” break and recovery. It stands alone, back from the road, miles from the village like a prison isolated by its hedges, walls and locked gates. She has no choice to be there, and no choice whether she comes or goes, and is forced by her husband to rest and heal from her condition there. A second level of her imprisonment is the room in the house she is confined to. Upstairs, away from the rest of the house. In isolation, a setting for an insane person it feels, but is actually a nursery. Against her repeated request to be downstairs …show more content…

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. The last level of the main characters development which contributes to the theme of imprisonment is seen in the stereotypical role of women in society during this time. It is a male dominant society in which her freedom, opinion and rights are denied by her male husband. She is unable to assert her independence verbally or through her writing because of her husband’s control and her submission to him. He is able to come and go at will, while she is denied her right to leave or make her own choices. The theme continues as her role and freedom to express herself is denied as she feels like a prisoner held against her will in the room

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The heavy bedstead, which was nailed to the ground, was another feature that represents the room as a jail cell. Therefore, the room that she is prisoned shows how the madness benefited her to gain control and achieve a way to escape her confinement. In conclusion, the diverse literature 's do share a common theme that shows women fighting to overcome societal expectations due to the female gender not valued as thinkers capable of being their equals and mental illness can be caused by society’s stereotypical

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In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, author Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses many literary techniques to allow the reader to understand the universal truth that a woman’s class is seen as lower than that of a man’s, due to their sex. We see this truth throughout the literary work, when the main character who is a woman, is put in confinement and later becomesdistraught and mentally unstablebecause her husband and brother who are both Physicians diagnoses her as “nervously depressed”. Two techniques author Gilman uses is tone and diction to illustrate how the narrator, among most women in that time period is treated as below men in class, with little say in their own mental or physical issues. Gilman utilizes tone to illustrate the universal truth of gender being in hand with class status, effectively. In the literary work,the narrator’s tone shifts from hopeless in the beginning, to determine in the end.

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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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As she understands that the women trapped in the wallpaper is a reflection of herself she free herself mentally. Resulting in her going

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Throughout the generation, women have always been trapped in some way or another. In the short story, ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’ and the novel ‘The Awakening’ highlights the struggle of women in the late 1800’s and the early 1900s in society. The Yellow wallpaper is a short story about women giving birth and being imprisoned in a room with a weird view of the yellow wall-paper. This resulted in her hallucination lead to the development of mental illness. By the end of the story, she rips off the yellow wallpaper and kills her husband.

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Connie and the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” are both vulnerable and victims of circumstance. The narrator is an accurate representation of the typical treatment of women at the beginning of the 20th century, the confinement and repression she

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This differs greatly from Jane, who begins to sympathize with the plight of all domestic women through her experience with the woman behind the yellow wallpaper. Although she initially frowned upon the woman’s efforts to escape, the more her mental health deteriorated, the more she began to relate her plight to that of the trapped woman, both prisoners desperate for escape. With her newfound revelation, she sought to save the trapped woman from her prison, subconsciously freeing herself in the process. “As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her…I wonder if they all came out of that wallpaper as I did?… “I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane!

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Secondly, throughout the story, the narrator describes seeing an evolving woman trapped inside of the wall. Although readers can assume that this woman is merely a product of the narrator’s mind, the woman can also be seen as a symbol of the narrator and her feelings of being trapped. Eventually, the woman in the wall aids the narrator in her escape. In conclusion, many elements of the narrator’s increasing madness throughout The Yellow Wallpaper contributed to her freedom from the confines of the room, the confines of society, and the confines of her

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She begins to see strangles heads in the wallpaper, which can be a symbolic representation of the patriarchal order that stifled women. The bars on the wallpaper that cage the imaginary women are a reflection of her own situation where she is confined in the old mansion. Even the smell of the wallpaper, which she describes as being ‘yellow’ and present throughout the house, is a reflection of the mental repression that is always present in her life. She is so consumed by the smell that she thinks about burning the old mansion just to cover it

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Her descriptions of the room, with the furniture seemingly being nailed to the floor and the windows being “barred” show an underlying understanding that her thoughts and personality is being confined. The irony present in this description, due to her belief that the room used to be a nursery, shows her early denial of her husband’s dominance over her. As the story progresses and she begins to see the woman behind the wallpaper, the reader is exposed to the narrator’s realization that she is the one that is actually being suppressed. The descriptions of the wallpaper, showing how confining it is for the symbolic woman behind it, shows how the narrator is being trapped by those bars in both her marriage and in her mental illness. Thus when she says, “At night in any kind of light… it becomes bars,” the reader is shown how restricted the narrator feels, reflected through the wallpaper.

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How she describes her surroundings and her interactions with her family evolves as her condition worsens. By the end, the reader can truly see just how far gone the narrator has gone. The narrator’s fixation on the yellow wallpaper had gone from a slight obsession to full mental breakdown. As it is with most good stories, the presence of strong symbolism and detailed settings is a very important aspect of the story that helps to draw the reader into the story.

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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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She identified the yellow wallpaper as a metaphor for women’s discourse. The narrator’s underlying feelings of confusion, depression, and frustration was covered by the yellow wallpaper which she rips from the walls at the very end to reveal “what is elsewhere kept hidden and embodies patterns that the patriarchal order ignores, suppresses, fears as grotesque or fails to perceive at all” (35). The yellow wallpaper is interpreted as the conflict of gender inequality and the struggles of women in a patriarchal society. The imagery reflects on how women feel toward sexual inequality and the situation with

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Also, the main character expresses selfishness even though she love him she is thinking about her being free and she does not have a problem with her husband it might just be with the institution of marriage where she feels like she is incarcerated. Whereas, in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is also imprisoned but this case more literal than the other, it shows a controlling male figure that controls his wives every move and even right to go outside even when she is supposed to be on “vacation” but she was not allowed to do much and had to keep her writing a secret. “ And I am alone a good deal just now... I lie here on this great immovable bed-it is nailed down.” (81).

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The theme of captivity begins as a literary tool in the progress of the female protagonist through the brilliance of dramatist, Henrik Ibsen. The term “captivity” implies images of imprisoned animals, slaves in bondage, and prisoners behind bars. Captivity in relation to the literary development of the female protagonist, and the performance portrayal of the female protagonist, contains all figures of mental and emotional oppression to an external entity. The idea of captivity as the dominant idea of a literary work, explores the imprisonment of a character’s inner being.

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