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Women In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

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Women in the 19th century were subjected to the pressures of societal expectations. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator, like many women, struggled with the confines of society. Her husband John was overbearing and able to control every aspect of her life due to him also being her physician. She had a rest cure imposed upon her which isolated her and forced her to suppress her imagination. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, many factors led to the narrator’s decline to insanity, including her husband John, the treatment that was forced upon her, as well as society. John, being both her husband and her doctor, has complete control over her wellbeing. He believes he knows what is best for her and treats her like a child. …show more content…

The narrator’s oppression is symbolized through the nursery as it is a constant reminder of her duty to care for her child. She was forced to stay in the nursery that had bars on the windows, a bed that was nailed to floor, and wallpaper that she hated. The narrator is forced to rest and "absolutely forbidden to ‘work’”(Gilman,1). With the silence and idleness of the "rest cure" imposed upon her, she no longer has a source of mental stimulation other than the wallpaper. She was forbidden from any type of intellectual activity, so her repressed imagination focused on the wallpaper that was a "constant irritant to a normal mind" (Gilman, 6). At first, she was irritated and intrigued by the seemingly random pattern, but soon she became obsessed with figuring it out. Her intrigue to solve it was shown through her determination to follow the pattern to a conclusion: “I lie here on this great immovable bed—it is nailed down, I believe—and follow that pattern about by the hour. It is as good as gymnastics, I assure you. I start, we'll say, at the bottom, down in the corner over there where it has not been touched, and I determine for the thousandth time that I WILL follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion” (Gilman, 4). The narrator is a creative, imaginative woman who finds her confinement suffocating. The lack of stimulation caused the narrator's mind to fixate on the wallpaper and eventually go insane. Although the rest cure was meant to help her, it only made things worse. The rest cure itself reinforced traditional gender roles placed upon

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The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is suffering severe depression and it only gets worse within time. She is a new mother, a newlywed, and is being plagued as having post-partum depression by her readers. Her husband keeps her confined for the “rest cure” from family and friends so that she cannot be influenced by anyone. His solution and the other physician’s solution to her sickness is to place her in isolation, and because he is a prestige physician, everyone assumes he knows what is best for her.

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The Yellow Wallpaper’s John is the narrator’s husband and doctor, who orders her the “rest cure” in the wake of her “nervous condition” shortly after giving birth. In the beginning, the narrator demonstrates the ways that John belittles her illness and her thoughts in general. For example, after she tells John that she finds the house to be ‘queer’ she writes, “John laughs at me of course, but one expects that in marriage” (792). John also takes to using pet names for his wife throughout the story as another form of belittlement. In one passage, John finds the narrator up in the middle of the night examining the wallpaper: “‘what is it little girl?’

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As stated by Haney-Peritz, “it is precisely because the narrator is patient enough to follow some of the doctor’s orders that she finds it necessary to deal with the yellow wallpaper” (116). Therefore, essentially, because she entrusted her mental state and health within the hands of the unqualified husband, despite his being a physician, it is the main reason she is consumed by the madness. What should have been a story of healing is now the “detailed and chilling account of a woman’s entrapment, defeat, and movement towards madness—one caused by the patriarchy” (Hume 477). The entire progression of her illness is littered with irony. The moment the wallpaper becomes the center of her attention the narrator has been ironic.

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The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a wife and a mother who suffers symptoms of depression and anxiety. Although she does not believe that anything is wrong with her, John who is her physician husband makes her in the “rest cure”. Also, while she was isolated in the nursery in the rented summer home, the narrator is banned to write or do any creative activities. The narrator severely wants to make her husband happy and accept her role as an ideal mother and wife, but she could not satisfy her husband’s needs with her passion to show her creativity. While trying to achieve John’s wishes for the best, the narrator writes in her journal that peace from her extreme loneliness and inaction.

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The narrator should be allowed to go outside, or be allowed to do things that she enjoys because these things will help her overcome her depression but; instead, she is imprisoned by John: imprisonment, John controls his wife's actions: authoritarian, she is scared because John threatens her: duress, she spends her time obsessing over the yellow wallpaper: fantasizing. Gilman also suffered from a nervous condition for some time. She went to a specialist who prescribed her the rest cure.

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In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the author uses various literary devices to express the themes in the story. Such as the nursery, this represents her sanity, and the doctor that had treated her mental illness, and wouldn’t let her write. Whereas the

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The growing intensity of her illness mirrors her growing obsession with the yellow wallpaper in her room. In the beginning, the narrator is able to speak of other things, such as the house and her husband. However, even then, she goes into excruciating detail about the wallpaper. She writes paragraphs on the wallpaper while simply mentioning other aspects of the house, such as the garden and the greenhouse (Gilman 317-318). This detail shows the reader that the narrator has an irregular fascination with the wallpaper, a fascination that only worsens as the story continues.

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In the Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is forced into bed rest to treat her mental condition. This does not work and her mental condition worsens as she gains an obsession with the yellow wallpaper in the room. One way the

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The Yellow Wallpaper was written by a woman named Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who during the late 1800’s to early 1900’s was a famous writer and strived to change social standards for women through her writing. She started writing after having left her husband after suffering from a nervous breakdown and needing a job to support herself after she moved to California in 1890. Her experiences with having to support herself as single women in a society that repressed women’s rights are what drove her to write some of her most famous books and short stories. She wrote The Yellow wallpaper and Women and Economics which dealt with teaching the public about women’s health issues and financial independence are just some of the many short stories and books she wrote to help bring social awareness to women’s oppression from society's standards. She used her own life as her inspiration

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Charlotte Perkings Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” follows a Victorian woman’s descent into a madness perpetuated by her societal and marital oppression. The narrator, Jane, begins her writing following her arrival at a new home with her husband John. As the narrator describes the new home, she also gives glimpses of her treatment and her condition. From the start, the narrator describes a state of depression and hysteria, of which both her husband and her physician say would be better with rest. Prescribed the “Rest Cure,” the narrator is confined to bed throughout the day.

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In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the author tells us about a woman that is suffering from an illness that was most likely postpartum depression. The woman of the story in the narrator and this story is written like it was her journal that she kept in secret. She is married to a man named John, who is also the physician that is treating her for her illness. He kept her locked in a room at the very top of the house that was once assumed to be a nursery. It had bars on the windows, scratches on the floor and dull yellow wallpaper.

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In “the yellow wallpaper”," the narrator's confinement to the room is enforced by her husband, who believes that the rest cure is the best treatment for her nervous condition. This reflects the patriarchal attitude of the time, in which women were often denied control of their situation. The story suggests that societal constraints and expectations can lead to mental breakdowns and can be a form of oppression in themselves. In "The Black Cat," the narrator is a victim of his own societal

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The Yellow Wallpaper exhibits exactly how women were treated at this time. She may well have been suffering from postpartum depression, yet she was told to rest and wait to be better. She could not get excited or else she may relapse because she was so fragile. It is constantly mentioned how weak she is, and that is what society believed at that point in time. The Yellow Wallpaper was a work that showcased the malpractice of society with

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In the essay, she states that The Yellow Wallpaper was largely autobiographical, based off her own experiences with the “rest cure,” a popular treatment for women suffering mental illness at the time (Gilman). The rest cure, created by physician Silas Weir Mitchell, required women undergoing the treatment to remain confined to bed for weeks or months at a time. These women were force fed, and forbidden from reading, writing, or social engagement. Many women felt that the rest cure caused their condition to deteriorate, and in one instance, a woman died from complications relating to the force fed diet (Poirier). Gilman’s essay states that, while undergoing the rest cure, she “...came so near the borderline of utter mental ruin that I could see over” (Gilman).

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman gothic tale of “The Yellow Wallpaper” wrote in 1892 is a classic in feminist literature. It is a wonderful and frightening gothic tale that can also be viewed into feminist terms. It is a story that contains many typical gothic trappings, but beneath the surface lies a tale of freedom and repression told in intricate symbolism as it is seen through the eyes of a mad narrator. Although it is represented as an innovative story of the narrator’s physiological meltdown it contains elements of classic gothic literature. “The Yellow Wallpaper” represents a woman being driven to madness because of the Victorian “rest-cure”.

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