Invisible Distrimination in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman

“The Yellow Wall-paper” is an amazing story that demonstrates how close-minded the world was a little over a hundred years ago. In the late eighteen hundreds, women were seen as personal objects that are not capable of making a mark in the world. If a woman did prove to be a strong intellectual person and had a promising future, they were shut out from society. Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote her stories from experience, but added fictional twists along the way to make her stories interesting.

Gilman's female narrator, who either chose not to fight this tradition or was unable to do so, loses her sanity at the hands of an oppressive male-dominated American society. The narrator feels certain that the

To begin, Gilman reveals very early on in the short story that the main character, Jane suffers from a mental illness that her husband john, who is also her physician fails to acknowledge is real. John along with other men in Janes family downplay her depression by attempting to convince her that she is not

In the yellow wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s the yellow wallpaper symbolizes the oppression of women by men and the scuffle to escape it. Throughout the story she is constantly fighting the battle within her as she notices she always is getting put down as if she were worth nothing to society. She not only speaks for herself but to all women who were treated the same way in the 1800’s. The author uses many literary techniques to portray the servitude, and unfairness from women like imagery and allegory, irony and many others.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses her short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” to show how women undergo oppression by gender roles. Gilman does so by taking the reader through the terrors of one woman’s changes in mental state. The narrator in this story becomes so oppressed by her husband that she actually goes insane. The act of oppression is very obvious within the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and shows how it changes one’s life forever.

Traditionally, men have held the power in society. Women have been treated as a second class of citizens with neither the legal rights nor the respect of their male counterparts. Culture has contributed to these gender roles by conditioning women to accept their subordinate status while encouraging young men to lead and control. Feminist criticism contends that literature either supports society’s patriarchal structure or provides social criticism in order to change this hierarchy. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts one women’s struggle against the traditional female role into which society attempts to force her and the societal reaction

In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman discusses the oppression men have towards women through the story of a nameless narrator during the 19th century. In the story, the unknown narrator, a woman, is telling her struggle for freedom and her fight to escape from the subordination in her marriage with a physician. In the story, the narrator suffers an illness that prevents her from doing things she likes such as writing. Throughout her illness, the narrator slowly becomes aware of her situation and then starts to fight to change her living condition with her husband. Through the use of two major symbols established throughout the text, Gilman brings awareness of women’s struggle to end their oppression by men and their fight to change the way society is dominated by men. In addition, the symbols used by Gilman underline the way women suffrage awareness slowly began to spread during the 19th century.

During the early 1800’s, the rights of men were still deemed more important than the rights of women. This issue was finally brought into discussion in the late 1800’s, where women now started to fight for their rights. This time period also brought around the start of feminism. The fact that Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” is a feminine story to make a statement about men controlling women is shown through three main points: what the woman sees in the yellow wallpaper, how the husband treats the woman, and also through the narrator herself.

This could lend more proof to the idea that the women's brain acts and functions differently than a man's brain. The story and Gilman can also teach that although women do function differently than men it does not make them inadequate. Furthermore, we still, as women, stand to learn that as women we should have full control over ourselves, mind, body and, soul; Because at the end of the day we should, and do, know what is best for

Throughout the short story Gilman depicts the wife’s growing frustrations when she disagrees with the treatment plan her husband, and her brother, and one of the most well renowned physicians for females (who is also male) all agree on. One of the first examples of this is when she is discussing the

The reader gets a first glimpse at her insanity as she constantly jumps from one subject to another. Gilman’s thought process is much like that of an insane being as she begins to let her thoughts run together in a mass of confusion. For example, at the beginning, Gilman is writing about a discussion with her husband, John, when suddenly she skips to a description of the old house: “But John says if I feel so I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself-before him, at least, and that makes me very tired. I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs…” (Gilman 470). This sense of confusion throughout the story relays to the reader that Gilman is indeed severely mentally confused and ill. According to several doctors in the medical journal Psychological Assessment, some of the characteristics of mentally ill patients during interpersonal and personal behavior include interruptions and ignoring personal boundaries (Kosson 91). These characteristics are seen in Gilman’s conversations with herself.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is known as a feminist story with obvious slanders of a desperate need for change in society. Gilman getting “The Yellow Wallpaper” published was a big step forward in the feminist movement as well as for the health and well-being of women everywhere. Even today, Gilman’s

Gilman’s short story is written in a unique way. The woman suffering from depression is the protagonist who narrates the story through a series of journal entries, making her the first person narrator. This is significant when it comes to understating the theme, as her first person journal entries enable the audience to see her thoughts and feelings throughout the story. In the beginning, the audience is given insight into the narrator’s stress at the fact that she is powerless to do anything since her husband doctor is the one with the final say. As narrator sums up her predicament, “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression – a slight tendency – what is one to do?” (Gilman 364). The narrator and her

The short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a perfect example of a story that needs to be re-analyzed from a feminist perspective. “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written in 1892 which was during the time period that feminists initially emerged and began fighting for women’s rights. This was also the time that women began trying to show their equality to men and proving that women could be just as useful outside the home as within. However, in literature, women were still being portrayed as weak, feeble-minded, and incapable of doing anything except for chores. Due to this information, “The Yellow Wallpaper” needs to be re-evaluated because of its set gender roles, its put-downs of women, and its blatant disregard

Charlotte Perkins Gilman has surprised that her writing on “The Yellow Wallpaper” that based on her experience unfortunately become one of the early feminism literature in the Victorian era. At first, her tale is regarded as a horror story because of its gothic theme. However, after the 1960s when feminism became a trending topic of women in Europe, North America, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, people started to comprehend that “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a feminism narrative which accidentally developed as a source for shaping the view of patriarchy and feminism characteristics in the early construction of feminism. Hooks (2004, p. 1) declared that “[p]atriarchy is a political-social system that insists that males are inherently dominating, superior to everything and everyone deemed weak, especially females, and endowed with the right to dominate and rule over the weak and to maintain that dominance through various forms of psychological terrorism and violence”. As a result, patriarchy generates a gap between men and women right. This fixed gender roles which assigned by male dominated society builds discrimination. Nevertheless, women who think critically may be revolting of it and resulting in the exploration of women imprisonment, which is “a recognition of an imbalance of power between the sexes, with women in a subordinate role to men”, states Hannam (2007, p. 4). “The Yellow Wallpaper” provides the story about woman madness in response to the patriarchal structure