Oppression In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)-- perhaps that is

Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's The Yellow Wallpaper is a commentary on themale oppression of women in a patriarchal society. However, the story itselfpresents an interesting look at one woman 's struggle to deal with both physicaland mental confinement. This theme is particularly thought-provoking when readin today 's context where individual freedom is one of our most cherished rights.This analysis will focus on two primary issues: 1) the many vivid images Gilmanuses to illustrate the physical and symbolic confinement the narrator enduresduring her illness; and 2) the overall effect of, and her reaction to, thisconfinement.

The exterior portion of the wallpaper is a portrayal of the narrator’s disease. At night, it “becomes bars” (Gilman 15). The fact that the exterior portion of the wallpaper becomes bars at night is symbolizing the fact that her disease is keeping her at bay and keeping her “locked in,” or unable to get better, whereas during the daytime, the exterior part is normal. This relates to how at times her disease is calm and controlled and other times, it flares up and completely controls her. The pattern is also described as torturing. Once you think that you have the pattern mastered, it comes back to overtake you. Whenever the narrator describes the frustrating the outside of the wallpaper is, she is illustrating how each time she starts to get the upper

The stigma of mental illness as well as the oppression of women are battles that are still being fought in society today. Charlotte Perkins Gilman authored the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper’ which depicts the story of a woman who has recently had a baby and whose husband has moved them into a summer house rental in the country in the hopes of helping her to recover from her mental ailments. Through a nameless narrator, Gilman uses a series of diary entries to portray the story of a woman who is suffering from mental illness who is prevented from getting the treatment that she requires due to being oppressed by the men in her life, which results in the narrator’s descent into insanity.

From reading “The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator which is Charlotte suffered more from oppression than depression. The narrator starts off the story by describing how their new summer home was, and how she felt it was a creepy home. John who is a physician tried to help cure his wife with her Illness restricts her on bed rest all day long. Charlotte tries to fight against her nervous condition while trying to be break free from her husband’s controlling ways. The narrator’s identity and lack of freedom are symbolized through the yellow wallpaper. The narrator uses the symbol of oppressive yellow wallpaper to describe her emotional feelings, and the need to escape her husband. When the narrator describes the yellow wallpaper she goes into detail

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a story about a 19th century women who suffers from mental depression in which her husband, a supposed doctor, forces her to refrain from all stimulating activity. This depression is caused after the birth of her child, now known as postpartum depression. While it is now known what causes this illness, the people of the 19th century did not. This lack of knowledge led to an isolation or rest cure applied by her husband who simply locks her in a room, once a nursery, with hideous yellow wallpaper in which the narrator find hidden messages and later is driven to insanity due to the cure applied. Looking at Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper” through the historical/biographical and feminist lenses

In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author uses the dreadful yellow wallpaper as a symbol for the married woman’s oppression. The wallpaper also represents the woman’s true feeling for her husband's behavior towards her. The main character in this story is not named because she herself is a symbol of the oppressed women of that time. She is also unnamed because this story is actually based on Gilman’s own experiences and the character was a representation of her.

Women in the nineteenth century were delimited and repressed by men. “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Gilman shows the oppression through the protagonist, whom you never learn the name, and the affect it has. The author uses a set of complex symbols such as the house, the window, the husband, and the wallpaper, which are compiled through personal experience. Born in Hartford Connecticut Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an eminent lecturer for social reform, novelist, and American feminist.

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

After analyzing the text and taking into consideration all of the different descriptions and interpretations of the wallpaper, I have come to the conclusion that in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the wallpaper is a symbol of confinement and limitation for Jane, the stories narrator and protagonist. Throughout

The story begins with the Narrator journaling about her depression as well as about how her husband John belittles her mental illness and her thoughts in general constantly. John prescribes his wife ‘rest cure’ in order to treat her illness. The ‘rest cure’ was developed in the late 1800’s by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell and was used to treat nervous illnesses. This treatment was also used far more often on women than it was on men (Science). The treatment involved isolation from friends and family for six to eight weeks as well as restrictions that prohibited the patient from writing, reading, and basically any other intellectual activities in order to help subdue their “over active imagination.” Patients would be cleaned and fed by nurses, reducing their dependency to that of a child. It was believed that this treatment was used to break the patients will, and scholars later argued that ‘rest cure’ “reinforced

In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses the literary approach in which the reader sees the text as if it were some kind of dream. Like psychoanalysis itself, this critical attempt seeks evidence of unresolved emotions, psychological conflicts, guilt, and ambivalences within “The Yellow Wallpaper”. In this particular story, the reader must analyze the language and symbolism of the text to reverse the process of the dream in order to reveal the hidden thoughts/meaning of the story itself. This is important when trying to reveal how the conflicts of the narrator of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and her behavior/actions towards these conflicts indirectly state the themes of gender role, freedom, madness,

Charlotte Perkins-Gilman’s portrayal of mental illness in The Yellow Wallpaper truly captures the historical truth of how the lives of everyday women were shaped by stereotypes and abuse. In the short story, the narrator’s mental state slowly deteriorates and is marked with periods of severe disassociation as consequence of her sentence. The inability of her husband to accept her condition is a massive factor in her initial disassociation. The narrator’s condition spirals after a month’s stay locked up, characterized a notable avoidance of reality, all while under her husband’s belief that resting is the miraculous cure for her sudden and “temporary nervous disease”. A week before she is able to go home, she has fully detached from societal expectations and fully into madness, escaping from her cruel treatment.

The narrator is not the only woman affected by the wallpaper in the story, as she often mentions a “great many women behind” (53) it. This generates the idea that women as a whole need to come together and rip the metaphorical wallpaper off of society. She focuses mainly on one woman, who is stuck behind the foul yellow wallpaper and shakes it at night but not during the day. The wallpaper is used as an element that binds women to the social constructs of society and traps them into their gender

During the mid-1800’s women were often treated horribly and prohibited to have a mind of their own. Charlotte Perkins Gilman the author of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper” does an exquisite job illustrating the mentality society during this time in the short story. Gillman’s notion often was that men and women did not have a different mindset. ‘’ The Yellow Wallpaper” is a tale about this women who is mentally unstable and cannot recover due to her husband’s disbelief. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman uses feminist criticism through the dialogue, symbolism hidden in the text, and the protagonist transformation to help the readers understand the male and female dynamics of that time period.