The Yellow Wallpaper Essay

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

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