Yellow Wallpaper Sexism

When asked the question of why she chose to write 'The Yellow Wallpaper', Charlotte Perkins Gilman claimed that experiences in her own life dealing with a nervous condition, then termed 'melancholia', had prompted her to write the short story as a means to try and save other people from a similar fate. Although she may have suffered from a similar condition to the narrator of her illuminating short story, Gilman's story cannot be coined merely a tale of insanity. Insanity is the vehicle for Gilman's larger comment on the atrocities of social conformity. The main character of "The Yellow Wallpaper" comes to recognize the inhumanity in society's treatment of women, and in her

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper” we are introduced to a woman who enjoys writing. Gilman does not give the reader the name of the women who narrates the story through her stream of consciousness. She shares that she has a nervous depression condition. John, the narrator’s husband feels it is “a slight hysterical tendency” (266). She has been treated for some nervous habits that she feels are legitimately causing harm to her way of life. However she feels her husband, a physician, and her doctor believe that she is embellishing her condition. The woman shares with the reader early in the story that she is defensive of how others around her perceive her emotional state. This causes a small abrasion of animosity that

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, The Yellow Wallpaper, portrays the life and mind of a woman suffering from post-partum depression in the late eighteenth century. Gilman uses setting to strengthen the impact of her story by allowing the distant country mansion symbolize the loneliness of her narrator, Jane. Gilman also uses flat characters to enhance the depth of Jane’s thoughts; however, Gilman’s use of narrative technique impacts her story the most. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses interior monologue to add impact to Jane’s progression into insanity, to add insight into the relationships in the story, and to increase the depth of Jane’s connection with the yellow wallpaper it self.

According to Gilbert and Gubar she is “mad” only by society’s standards, and, more importantly, that she is, in fact, moving into “the open spaces of her own authority” (91). This interpretation seems to just touch on the many social issues the narrator experiences. Keeping the narrator anonymous is one of the key themes to show the reader who the woman really is, because of the assumption at the beginning of her status in society and in her marriage to a prominent doctor. Her husband John does not even acknowledge his wife may have any mental problems and all attempts for the woman to tell him fail. For as she in desperation states “John laughs at me about this wallpaper” (Gilman 803). Thus, if the woman can expect to get laughed at in her marriage, it would be impossible for her to actually talk to her husband, much less convince him to change his diagnosis of her, especially because he is “so wise” and a physician (Gilman 806). Indeed, male-dominant opinion becomes even more prevalent when it seems that all three different men in the story are all close to her and all prescribe the same “rest cure” for her. However, she seems to “disagree with their ideas”, for as she lucidly states, “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change would do me good” (Gilman 801).

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator must deal with several different conflicts. She is diagnosed with “temporary nervous depression and a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 221). Most of her conflicts, such as, differentiating from creativity and reality, her sense of entrapment by her husband, and not fitting in with the stereotypical role of women in her time, are centered around her mental illness and she has to deal with them.

The "Yellow Wall Paper "by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a chilling study and experiment of mental disorder in nineteenth century. This is a story of a miserable wife, a young woman in anguish, stress surrounding her in the walls of her bedroom and under the control of her husband doctor, who had given her the treatment of isolation and rest. This short story vividly reflects both a woman in torment and oppression as well as a woman struggling for self expression. The setting of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the driving force in the story because it is the main factor that caused the narrator to go insane.

The woman behind this work of literature portrays the role of women in the society during that period of time. "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a well written story describing a woman who suffers from insanity and how she struggles to express her own thoughts and feelings. The author uses her own experience to criticize male domination of women during the nineteenth century. Although the story was written fifty years ago, "The Yellow Wallpaper" still brings a clear message how powerless women were during that time.

In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins describes the story of a woman suffering from a mental illness during the 19th century. The protagonist (an unknown narrator) is a wife and mother suffering from postpartum depression. Her husband John, who is also her doctor, diagnosed her with hysteria and he decided to move away with her to start a “rest cure,” at a mansion, isolated from the village. The narrator was powerless against her husband, and he had the authority of determining what she does, who she sees, and where she goes while she recovers from her illness. Throughout the story, the author used stylistic elements, such as strong symbolism, to show how the mental state of the narrator slowly deteriorates and ends

In the second part of the sentence, it seems as though the woman doesn't want to believe what her husband is telling her thus setting the stage for her rebellion. All her husband wants her to do is rest and sleep: he even suppresses her creative talent by not allowing her to write. She is in constant fear of being caught by her husband; "I must put this away, -he hates to have me write a word." It seems as though John is being more of a father than a husband and because of this, she feels that she should be a "good girl" and appreciate what he is doing for her even though she knows that his diagnosis is killing her. "He takes all care from me, and I feel so basely ungrateful not to value it more...He took me in his arms and called me blessed little goose..." This is a clear indication of someone trying to run another person's life. By him not allowing her to write he is causing her depression to worsen. If she had been "allowed" to come and go as she pleased, her depression may have lifted: "I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve, the press of ideas and rest me." Her husband is suppressing the one major outlet that will help her get better in her seclusion, "writing." By absolutely forbidding her to work until she is well again he is imprisoning her and causing her depression. John has made her a prisoner not only in their home but also in

Days turn into weeks, and after still being exposed to this particular yellow wallpaper, she stars having more severe hallucinations. Every time she looks at the wallpaper, she sees a woman inside it, shaking and moving the walls as if she is trying to escape away from it. Gilman uses the image of this trapped woman inside the wallpaper as a way to express the incarceration of women at her time. By looking at the story from this point of view and analyzing the woman trying to leave the wallpaper, Gilman expresses the revolutionary movement that was going on at the time, using the narrator as a symbol of the whole female society. One critic describes “And in identifying with and freeing both the woman and that part of herself trapped by her patriarchal world, the narrator finds a measure of freedom” (Golden 53). This passage represents Gilman’s society and the struggle that women had go through in order to escape a world dominated by a male society.

Women in the eighteenth century were confined by their husbands, and imprisoned in their own homes. Women had no rights to their own lives, or a say so in how to live it. Women at this time struggled for equality, and they were unable to think or live for themselves. If they showed any signs of being unhappy they were condemned by society and their master. In this process many women transcended into severe nervous depression. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, we observe a woman’s descent into madness, and we can better understand how women of this time suffered with oppression. This story is a glimpse of Gilman’s real life struggle with gender roles, inner conflict,

In "The Yellow Wallpaper," Charlotte Perkins Gilman presents the narrator, being the main character, as an ill woman. However, she is not ill physically. She is ill in her mind. More than any chemical imbalance that may be present; the narrator's environment is what causes her to go mad.

"Mitchell's patients lost much of themselves as people" (53).  Gilman herself, after sinking into a deep depression, was sent to Mitchell in Philadelphia for his rest cure.  After a month of treatment Mitchell concluded that there was nothing wrong with her and sent her home with these instructions: "Live as domestic a life as possible.  Have your child with you at all times.  Lie down an hour after each meal.  Have but two hours of intellectual life a day.  And never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live." (Gilman, Autobiography 62).  Gilman followed these instructions for several months until she came extremely close to losing her mind.  Says Gilman of this time: "I made a rag baby, hung it on the doorknob and played with it.  I would crawl into remote closets and under beds to hide from the grinding pressure of that profound distress." (63).  It is exactly this situation that lead Charlotte Perkins Gilman to write her eerily accurate tale of one woman's forced regression into insanity.

Within a few pages of the story, it becomes quite clear that Gilman is concealing something; the narrator has a secret that she is not sharing with anyone. This secret is her own identity. Her namelessness fits both within the Gothic tradition of concealed objects and is also quite a telling clue that points to the loss of personal identity in women that occurs when they are locked into the unfortunate

The narrator, who is never named, is depicted as a woman who is confined and repressed based on her gender. During the time Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the feminist movement was going through its second surge and was continuously expanding. Gilman was considered “the idol of radical feminists” (Degler 21) and the “most original and challenging mind, which the women movement produced” (Degler 21). One of the major themes found throughout Gilman’s writings is “to show the disastrous and all-pervasive effects upon women and upon society of the continued suppression of her sex” ( Degler 22). This is seen in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, when the narrator