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The Yellow Wallpaper Gender Analysis

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The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a perfect example of how women try to defend their gender roles against men in this time period of gender conflicts. At the beginning of the story the narrator states that she is sick with a “temporary nervous depression- a slight hysterical tendency,” (Perkins, 1334). With this problem the narrator’s husband John, who she states is a physician (Perkins, 1334) does not let her leave the house and says she is forbidden to “work,” (Perkins, 1334). She also takes pains to control herself but they make her very tired. She hates the room that she is put in but her husband does not listen to her and take her advice, he only takes it upon himself with what he likes and what he wants. John also hates when the narrator writes day …show more content…

Day by day the narrator is stuck in this room that she “dislikes.” While she is stuck in this room she studies the yellow wallpaper, she states it is “repellant, almost revolting, a smoldering unclean yellow,” (Perkins, 1335). As days go by she starts to to not only notice the color but the patterns and shapes. She notices on page 1341, a figure of a women, and a pattern of bars that makes it look like this woman is trapped behind the bars. This makes you think if her pain medicine is causing her more problems by seeing things, or her disorder is being affected by being trapped in this room, and she is getting worse by not concentrating on herself but on the wall. When looking at the wallpaper, the narrator sees different things. She sees a figure standing over something else, a body huddled on the ground, and it's not difficult to infer that the pattern displayed upon the yellow wallpaper is that of a man

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