Women In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” in 1892 to convey the thoughts of a troubled woman trapped in a male dominated world. Women in the nineteenth century were faced with patriarchal oppression and many characteristics of the story gives the reader an inside view of what it was like as a woman living in this time period. The men in this era of patriarchy treated women as if they were inferior and tried to exert their dominance over them whenever possible. The women couldn’t do anything and were forced to accept what their husbands said as the final say. The power of men over women can be seen in the beginning of the story were the narrator is writing in her journal and says that she could’ve been healed faster if it wasn’t

The wallpaper itself can be broken down to represents the narrator’s marriage. According to Treichler, “The yellow wallpaper is variously interpreted by readers to represent the ‘pattern’ which underlines sexual inequality”(62). Many readers have come up with the idea that the wall paper’s design represents how men felt about women during that time period, “Pointless” and with “lame uncertain curves”. While the background would represent the many men of this time period. The men were the framework of most marriages as is the background is to most work. They were what the marriages dependent on to stay strong and they were looked at as the platform of the family. Then there’s the color of the wallpaper which was yellow which can be interpreted into many different ways. According to Raetta Parker, yellow is viewed by most men as a “kiddish” color. This helps elaborate on how the narrator’s husband views his wife. He not only kept her in a room colored for a child but he constantly called the narrator childish names. He also made her opinions out to be less of importance to his, similar to how adults treat most children. Another thing that is intriguing about the color of the wallpaper is that yellow represents instability which is opposite of what a marriage should be. A marriage should be safe and stable something the color yellow most definitely