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Literary Analysis Of The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Satisfactory Essays

Adrienne Lung
Instructor Ashley K. Hall
Freshman English II
18 February 2016
Literary Analysis of Symbolism in The Yellow Wallpaper

During the late 1800’s, life for women was much different than it is today. Home and family were expected to be their priorities rather than education or the pursuit of a career in the professional world. Married women were not allowed to own property, keep the wages they earned or sign contracts. No woman could vote either. In short, women in the 1800’s were essentially second class citizens. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman illustrates the narrator’s struggle to free herself from her condition as well as society’s beliefs about women in the late nineteenth century. The following quote is one such example the author uses to illustrate the narrator’s denial of her growing insight and her powerlessness to escape. Both the narrator and the woman are trapped within the stifling domestic design: There are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clerer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern I don’t like it a bit. I wonder-I begin to think-I wish John would take me away from here! (Gilman) Despite the belief some people hold that conditions such as oppression do not exist because they cannot be

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