Imprisonment of Women Exposed in The Yellow Wallpaper

  “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a symbolic tale of one woman’s struggle to break free from her mental prison.  Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows the reader how quickly insanity takes hold when a person is taken out of context and completely isolated from the rest of the world.  The narrator is a depressed woman who cannot handle being alone and retreats into her own delusions as opposed to accepting her reality.  This mental prison is a symbol for the actual repression of women’s rights in society and we see the consequences when a woman tries to free herself from this social slavery.

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

Many of the passages concerning the husband can be interpreted as containing sarcasm, a great many contain irony, and several border on parody (Johnson 528). It is true that the husband’s language is exaggerated at times, but dismissing the husband’s character as caricature seems extreme. He is instead the natural complement to the narrator’s madness and uncontrolled fancy: the character of John is control and “sanity” as defined by Victorian culture and is therefore the narrator’s opposite. Greg Johnson notes that John exhibits a near-obsession with “reason,” even as his wife grows mad. He is the narrator’s necessary counterpart, without whose stifling influence her eventual freedom would not be gained. And he is also transformed at the end of the tale—in a reversal of traditional gothic roles—because it is he, not a female, who faints when confronted with madness (529).

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.

Through a woman's perspective of assumed insanity, Charlotte Perkins Gilman comments on the role of the female in the late nineteenth century society in relation to her male counterpart in her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." Gilman uses her own experience with mental instability to show the lack of power that women wielded in shaping the course of their psychological treatment. Further she uses vivid and horrific imagery to draw on the imagination of the reader to conceive the terrors within the mind of the psychologically wounded.

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.

  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.

With good intentions, John controls his wife's life and makes all decisions for her, whether she agrees with them or not. His wife is full aware of the restrictions that her husband has imposed on her, but she is recessive to his control and often agrees with him. However, she fails to see “signs of her confinement: the bars at the window, the gate at the top of the stairs, steel rings on the walls, and the nailed-down bestead” (Korb). Because she is unable to escape from the isolation that her husband has kept her in, the woman seeks relief from the yellow wallpaper and she creates an imaginary relationship it. In fact, the worst thing her husband should not of done is give his unstable wife an object that is not appealing to focus on. In doing so, he has given her an opportunity to let her mind wonder and create objects that no one else sees. John, however, does not give any thought to this because after all, he thinks he knows what is best for his wife.

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

How does John lead the narrator to her state of oppression? John has been treating his wife cruelly. By the cruel treatment, it’s not physical abuse, but mental abuse. The mental abuse is not cursing or name calling, but an unusual way to treat a wife. Most of the time, John demeaned her and her rights as a human being by treating her like a child.

Her marriage also causes her to lose control. Even within the one thing that is supposed to hold strong, she is alone. Her husband, leaving her on a daily basis to work, insists that she cannot write nor visit friends and family. Thus, he leaves her alone during the day to sit

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

by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a story of a woman, her psychological difficulties and her

locked away in a mental prison of her husband’s maneuvers, the protagonist of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the embodiment of the struggles faced by women in seeking freedom of thought. The story is a psychological thriller of a sort. This theme is made clear through the characterization of John (the protagonist’s husband), the thoughts and writing of Jane, and the environment in which she is placed. Combined, these elements describe the imprisonment of women, and the control held over them by men. John is a perfect example of a dominating spouse who holds absolute control over his wife jane. (""The Yellow Wallpaper" Feminist Criticism Academic").