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Charlotte Perkins Gilman Unequal Status Of Women

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In the late 18th century women’s health, both physical and mental, was ignored. Many women were misdiagnosed, which led to them not getting the proper treatment to get better. Doctors believed that when a women began to show symptoms of what is now known as postpartum depression they were simply hysterical. Due to this misdiagnoses, women were confined to stay at home and do nothing. The inability to speak out led to women having no rights and required that women had to obey their husbands. Early feminist movements arose because of the inequality many women faced during this time. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a feminist writer who focused her writing on the unequal status of women within marriage and other social norms. One of Charlotte Perkins …show more content…

The pain medication that her husband has her on appears to be causing her to feel groggy and unable to express herself even through her journal entries. This is seen when the narrator states that she thinks “sometimes that if [she] were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and [bring her comfort]. But [she] finds [she] gets pretty tired when [she tries]” (Gilman,79). She goes on to states that she finds “it is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about [her] work” (Gilman, 79). John is causing the narrator more harm than good, and one can see that more clearly because when a person lacks the strength to do something that they love that means that there is something really wrong with that person. In addition, John is treating his wife like someone that is less than him, which leads one to state that he is driving his wife crazy. As a result, the cure that John has put her on, causes her to begin to have delusions. The narrator begins to imagine that there is a woman trapped in the wallpaper. By showing that the narrator is going insane, Gilman helps show the severity of the narrator’s health and the lack of control that she has over her own well-being. The narrator asks her husband if they could leave the home that they are renting one last time because she feels like she is losing her mind, and John responds by saying that she is not in any real danger and that she should not let false ideas into her head (Gilman,83). John then begs her to stop letting “false and foolish [ideas]” (Gilman, 83) like that into her head for his sake, the sake of their child, and her sake. (Gilman, 83) Then the narrator stops talking and lets her husband go to sleep. This shows that once again the narrator is trying to take control of her own situation but she unable to gain control because her

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