How Did The Yellow Wallpaper Treat Women In The 1800's

  The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman can by read in many different ways.  Some think of it as a tragic horror story while others may find it to be a tale of a woman trying to find her identity in a male-dominated society.  The story is based on an episode in Gilman's life when she suffered from a nervous disease called melancholia.  A male specialist advised her to "live a domestic a life as far as possible.. and never to touch a pen, brush or pencil..."   (Gilman, 669).   She lived by these guidelines for three months until she came close to suffering from a nervous breakdown.  Gilman then decided to continue writing, despite the physicians advice, and overcame her illness.

Toward the beginning of her entries, her relationship with John appeared civil, if not loving: in one of her entries, she wrote “Dear John! He loves me very dearly, and hates to have me sick” (DiYanni 546), and several lines later, described how “… dear John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs and laid me on the bed, and sat by me and read till it tired my head. He said I was his darling and his comfort and all he had, and that I must take care of myself for his sake” (DiYanni 547). Jane seemed to believe that he truly loved her and wanted her to feel better. Her conversations with Jennie, John’s sister and the housekeeper, were initially also pleasant, and Jane described her as “a dear girl… and so careful of me!” (DiYanni 545) The “woman in the wallpaper” did not yet exist. However, Jane separated herself from both of them: John was away for much of the day, “and even some nights when his cases are serious” (DiYanni 545). Even when he was home, he was often asleep, leaving his wife to spend her nights with the wallpaper and the woman running around within it (DiYanni 548). Toward the end, Jane even mentioned that she was thankful that John would not be returning until the next morning, so she would be able to finally do something about letting the woman in the wallpaper out. Jane also began to

In the 1890s the time period Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote “ The Yellow Wallpaper” a woman's life was quite different from today. A woman's top priority in this day and time was to have the needs of her husband taken care of and see to it that he is pleased. Also during this time wealthy women ordinarily are task free, they would have a caregiver of some sort to care for them. In “ The Yellow Wallpaper” the female lead the narrator embodies what's accustomed to her and is limited and controlled by her husband, she follows her husband's word and tries to never upset him.

     The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a fictionalized autobiographical account that illustrates the emotional and intellectual deterioration of the female narrator who is also a wife and mother. The woman, who seemingly is suffering from post-partum depression, searches for some sort of peace in her male dominated world. She is given a “rest cure” from her husband/neurologist doctor that requires strict bed rest and an imposed reprieve form any mental stimulation. As a result of her husband’s controlling edicts, the woman develops an obsessive attachment to the intricate details of the wallpaper on her bedroom wall. The woman’s increasingly intense obsession with

women committed if they felt she was to opinionated or not submissive enough. Women were controlled by the men in their lives and they had no say in their treatment.

“The Yellow Wallpaper”, like many stories, has an underlying message that seems to be hidden between the lines. If you sit down and read this story once, you might see a bit of male domination of John over the narrator, but if you read it a second time and think deeper you see the true feminist theme. Gillman truly showed her feminist ways throughout this story, although it’s a short story and contains a lot of powerful messages in it. The first point is that Gillman uses metaphors to show her feminism, the second is that she uses small things, like the narrators word choice, to show how women are over looked and the last point is that the women are so concerned with what the opinions of men and what they think.

The acceptance of gender role by both the characters puts John in a place where his misrecognition of the narrator’s requirements makes him the villain of the story. John and the narrator have accepted the “normal” of the society like the fetishizing of women as an ignorant child, husband as the decision maker in a marriage and the conventional ideals of “reputable wife.” The narrator’s intention to keep her journal hidden is the cause of the expectations of society to treat literacy for women as a luxury which allows John to think writing to be useless for the narrator (a homemaker), and is rather laborious in a rest cure which he thinks to be necessary for the wellbeing of the narrator. The narrator’s mental illness grows without an understanding

Written and published in 1892, Gilman’s work, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, reflected the opposition of motherhood and domestic responsibilities being a woman’s top priority. Charles Darwin believed that women were the more necessary sex; able to preserve the species; and should be allowed to enter the professional field, but others saw that they belonged in the house. Due to their controversy, more women were in high school than men, but higher education was not typically an option. The only professions open to them were nursing and elementary education. Gilman argued that women’s secondary status in society and dependence on men was not a result of biological inferiority, but rather of culturally enforced behavior. Nineteenth century females had

The women in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story that details one woman’s experience with what we know today as postpartum depression. Language is used throughout the excerpt to develop the character’s attitude towards her husband. The wife’s attitude toward towards her husband is intimidation and also frustration. One of the character’s attitude towards her husband is intimidation. One way she is intimated is by the gender discrimination.

In the time that this story was written and took place, women were seen as inferior compared to men and the only thing they were supposed to do was spend time at home and take care of the house. As shown by the doctors in the story, women were not supposed to express themselves by writing or doing anything creative. “In the final words of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator describes how she must crawl over John’s astonished body. Like the transvitivism of the narrator’s ‘self-realization,’ this closing image displaces a conjunction of erotic and aggressive impulses, a conjunction which once again suggests that by identifying herself with the wallpaper’s shadow-woman the narrator has firmly installed herself in the realm of the imaginary.(Haney-Peritz, 8)” This quote from “Monumental feminism and literature’s ancestral house: Another look at ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,” describes Jane crawling over John which shows feminism because of the fact that women were controlled by their husbands, her crawling over him showed an escape from the solitary confinement he prescribed to her.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a story about a woman who is living in a new house with her husband and baby, she writes in her journal about the yellow wallpaper and events taking place in her life. The author of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman conveys a message using symbolism about the oppression of women during this time period. We can see the symbolism being used in the yellow wallpaper, the characters Journal, and her mental breakdown, which help to illustrate the common themes of this story, such as, oppression and feeling trapped in the roles that are set by society.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” the husband, John, is conventional for the time. During the 19th-century, men were at the top of the patriarchal order, this meant that his wife, Jane, had no say in what he did for her or to her. Being that John thought nothing was wrong with Jane and he was a well-known physician, he took her to a house for the summer so that she may get some rest.Jane due to circumstances had no say in the matter. John at times was controlling, but at the same time, he loved his wife. Most of his actions were typical of men in this time period and really say a lot about how men treated their wives back then and how they always imagined that they were the divine leaders of the household. Men in this

John doesn’t respect his wife sickness. John is just caring for himself instead of wife: "'It is apparent that John's self-reported concern for Jane's welfare is not much more than a selfish desire to maintain the order/order of own life'"(Suess). John doesn't really care about his wife because if he really did care for his wife, he could've gotten her the help that she needs. "In the Yellow Wallpaper" John laughs at his wife; when she talks to him about her feelings. Jane doesn't feel comfortable inside the house:"'I thought it was good time to talk so, I told home that I really was not gaining here, and that I wished he would take me'"(Gilman 93). The narrator doesn't want to be in creepy house. Her husband seem not care about how feels about the house.

In ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, John was the typical men and treated the protagonist; his wife, like how a typical women were treated at this time period. Through out the short story, Gilman shows how men had control over women, how women had no great value and how they were imprisoned by men. Women had

The short story, the Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman can be analyzed in depth by both the psycho-analytic theory and the feminist theory. On one hand the reader witnesses the mind of a woman who travels the road from sanity to insanity to suicide “caused” by the wallpaper she grows to despise in her bedroom. On the other hand, the reader gets a vivid picture of a woman’s place in 1911 and how she was treated when dealing what we now term as post-partum depression. The woman I met in this story was constantly watched and controlled by her husband to such an extreme that she eventually becomes pychootic and plots to make her escape.