Feminism In The Yellow Wallpaper

The story "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a story about control. In the late 1800's, women were looked upon as having no effect on society other than bearing children and keeping house. It was difficult for women to express themselves in a world dominated by males. The men held the jobs, the men held the knowledge, the men held the key to the lock known as society . . . or so they thought. The narrator in "The Wallpaper" is under this kind of control from her husband, John. Although most readers believe this story is about a woman who goes insane, it is actually about a woman’s quest for control of her life.

  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.

   The story "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a story about control. In the late 1800's, women were looked upon as having no effect on society other than bearing children and keeping house. It was difficult for women to express themselves in a world dominated by males. The men held the jobs, the men held the knowledge, the men held the key to the lock known as society  - or so they thought. The narrator in "The Wallpaper" is under this kind of control from her husband, John. Although most readers believe this story is about a woman who goes insane, it is actually about a woman’s quest for control of her life.

It was commonly casted that women during the 19th century were not to go beyond their domestic spheres. If a woman were to go beyond the norms and partake in a “male” activity and not assign to “womanly” duties, it were to take an ill effect on her, because she was designed to act merely as a mother, wife, and homemaker. The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, demonstrates the status of women in the 19th century within society, revealing that madness in this story stems from the oppressive control of gender on woman. A woman who is trying to escape from confinement may result in madness. The use of madness characterizes women as victims of society, suffering the effects of isolation brought on by oppression driving

During the nineteenth century, women and men played vastly different roles. While men had the free will to choose the life paths they desired, women lacked such privileges. Women, instead, were expected to tend to domestic responsibilities. Unlike men, they were unable to voice their opinions, instead, myriads of them lived monotonous lives with their, often condescending, husbands. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, portrays a woman in the nineteenth century descending into psychosis. After the birth of her daughter, the unnamed narrator presumably endures postpartum depression and is forced into bed rest as a cure. In her male-dominated society, the narrator often feels as though she is at a loss of control over her life. Despite what she believes is best for her own betterment, her husband, John, overrides her inputs. She is stripped away from the outside world and left with nothing more than her concealed diary entries and the horrid yellow wallpaper of her bedroom. Although John seemingly wants the best for his wife, his dismissiveness towards her mental state and solicitations necessarily cause her to become deranged; her breakdown is a result of feeling powerless as she is encaged in a house she does not care for, restricted from her activities, and her inability to communicate effectively.

When The Yellow Wallpaper was published in 1892 the first wave of feminism was occurring, which probably had an influence on Gilman’s attitude and writing. Women’s desire to have more opportunities and being able to vote are the main characteristics of first-wave feminism. The rebellion against domesticity also played an important role in the movement as it created an uproar when women started to act “unladylike” (Rampton, 2015). Further, Gilman indirectly criticizes the men’s reaction to the feminism wave in The Yellow Wallpaper. The husband in the story clearly wants to ensure that his wife doesn’t begin to act out by belittling her, keeping her domestic, and making sure she stays under his control. He denies her requests to change the room or to let her visit family, teaching her that she doesn’t actually have a choice. Hence, it is a prime example of the suppression of women in the 19th

In Charlotte Perkins “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which was published in 1892, the author explores the gender ideologies of the time period and how women were seen as inferior, resulting in unfair treatment in cases even involving their personal health. The main character, who is a woman named Jane, is led to insanity due to the unsuitable treatment received for her depression, but the insanity she goes into symbolizes a revelation. As she progresses into this insanity, the author ties in the discovery the main character makes of the hidden figure in the wallpaper to a woman making the discovery of how the oppressions and limitations women face must be challenged and changed in order to escape the lifestyle which keeps them imprisoned to the

In “The Yellow wallpaper”, the wallpaper is a metaphor that expresses women’s protest against the repression of the society and their personal identity at the rise of feminism. During the Victorian era, women were kept down and kept in line by their married men and other men close to them. "The Yellow Wallpaper", written By Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a tale of a woman, her mental difficulties and her husband’s so called therapeutic treatment ‘rest cure’ of her misery during the late 1800s. The tale starts out in the summer with a young woman and her husband travelling for the healing powers of being out from writing, which only appears to aggravate her condition. His delusion gets Jane (protagonist), trapped in a room, shut up in a bed making her go psychotic. As the tale opens, she begins to imagine a woman inside ‘the yellow wallpaper’.

While reading one can study the societal and feminist aspects of “The Yellow Wallpaper” and how they have helped change our society in ways like informing people about post-partum depression and its serious outcomes if not treated properly. While reading another thing to aspect to understand is what was happening in the world at the time Charlotte Perkins Gilman published this story that made it so well known.

The way woman were treated in the late 1800’s is totally different than today. At that time woman and men were not equal to each other. Women were confined to particular roles. The men usually played the dominant role which led women to just listen and follow their spouse. During that time woman were at the bottom of the social class. The regular household consisted of a male who handles all the important decision making things while the women were housewives. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman who is a feminist who purposely shows examples of the roles women played in society in the late 1800’s. Gilman wanted to prove a major point that confining women to only womanly roles of the time, will drive woman crazy. The woman in the short story was forced to follow her husband instuctions. She was not able to make her own decisions and this infantilized her which drove her insane.

The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is about a mentally ill woman named Jane. She lives during a time when women did not have much they could do. The men dominated everything and were to make the decisions for the women. The man’s primary role was to be the provider, while the woman’s primary role was to be the housekeeper and caretaker. During this time period, women would have to ask their husbands, fathers, or even brothers if they could do something.

     The short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman gives a brilliant description of the plight of the Victorian woman, and the mental agony that her and many other women were put through as "treatment" for depression when they found that they were not satisfied by the life they had been given.

     In the late nineteenth century, after the American social and economic shift commonly referred to as the "Industrial Revolution" had changed the very fabric of American society, increased attention was paid to the psychological disorders that apparently had steamed up out of the new smokestacks and skyscrapers in urban populations (Bauer, 131).  These disorders were presumed to have been born out of the exhaustion and "wear and tear" of industrial society (Bauer, 131-132).  An obvious effect of these new disorders was a slew of physicians and psychiatrists advocating one sort of cure or another, although the "rest cure" popularized by the physician S. Weir Mitchell was the most

The yellow wallpaper is a story about John and his wife who he keeps locked up due to her "nervous condition" of anxiety. John diagnoses her as sick and has his own remedy to cure her. His remedy s to keep her inside and deterring her from almost all activities. She is not allowed to write, make decisions on her own, or interact with the outside world. John claims that her condition is improving but she knows that it is not. She eats almost nothing all day and when it is suppertime she eats a normal meal. John sees this and proclaims her appetite is improving. Later in the story, the woman creates something of an imaginary friend trapped behind the horrible looking yellow wallpaper in

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.