Self-Autonomy In Women In Ernest Hemingway's The Yellow Wallpaper

"Hills Like White Elephants" by Ernest Hemingway, is a great example of women's role in the last century. The story is told in a simple form of dialogue between a man and a young woman nicknamed Jig. Although there is an important decision to be made, nothing of much importance is talked about. In the story, Jig does not have much influence in her relationship with the man, even when it comes to an abortion.

     The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a fictionalized autobiographical account that illustrates the emotional and intellectual deterioration of the female narrator who is also a wife and mother. The woman, who seemingly is suffering from post-partum depression, searches for some sort of peace in her male dominated world. She is given a “rest cure” from her husband/neurologist doctor that requires strict bed rest and an imposed reprieve form any mental stimulation. As a result of her husband’s controlling edicts, the woman develops an obsessive attachment to the intricate details of the wallpaper on her bedroom wall. The woman’s increasingly intense obsession with

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.

Women struggled with society to gain status equal to men and their efforts were found in many literary works..  Famous authors such as Mary Wollestonecraft, Alice Walker, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman herself published works that expressed these views and served as a creative outlet similar to the narrator of 'The Yellow Wallpaper.'

Today, women have more freedoms than we did in the early nineteenth century. We have the right to vote, seek positions that are normally meant for men, and most of all, the right to use our minds. However, for women in the late 1800’s, they were brought up to be submissive housewives who were not allowed to express their own interests. In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a woman is isolated from the world and her family because she is suffering from a temporary illness. Under her husband’s care, she undergoes a treatment called “rest cure” prescribed by her doctor, Dr. Weir Mitchell. It includes bed rest, no emotional or physical stimulus, and

"The Yellow Wallpaper" is about a creative woman whose talents are suppressed by her dominant husband. His efforts to oppress her in order to keep her within society's norms of what a wife is supposed to act like, only lead to her mental destruction. He is more concerned with societal norms than the mental health of his wife. In trying to become independent and overcome her own suppressed thoughts, and her husbands false diagnosis of her; she loses her sanity. One way the story illustrates his dominance is by the way he, a well-know and

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

Kate Chopin’s the most well-known work The Awakening and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” both initially published in 1899, present astoundingly analogous stories of the role of women in society. Both texts are narrated from the point of view of a female protagonist who breaks away from the restraining conventions of a male-ruled society before eventually emancipating through separation from the thinking world, via suicide in The Awakening and insanity in “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” Some would argue that the narrators are unreliable and the stories are misrepresented simply because

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

  "The Yellow Wallpaper," written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the late nineteenth century, explores the dark forbidding world of one woman's plunge into a severe post-partum depressive state. The story presents a theme of the search for self-identity. Through interacting with human beings and the environment, the protagonist creates for herself a life of her own.

     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.

It does not take the form of the traditional symbol of security for the domestic

I believe that throughout the story it can be concluded that the father did have OCD based on his behavior with certain things. But I also believe that gender identity is another major theme in the story. For example, "But I hate pink, I hate flowers" (128). The daughter was not the typical girl at her age, she hated anything that was girly therefore when her father wanted to switch out her wallpaper to pink flowers she did not particularly agree. Her hair was cut short like a boy but her father wanted her to be more feminine. For instants her father would say, "wash these old curtains so we can put up the hand-embroidered lace ones" (126). Her father was more into design and wanting things to be beautiful and perfect which her daughter did

As the story continues I came to the conclusion that the narrator “realizes that the wallpaper may be the only part of her life she can control” as stated by MacPike. She “learns to use it on an intellectual level to replace the adult intellectual activity forbidden to her.” John has prohibited her to do any activity, such as her writing. Consequently the author has no control over her life. Moreover, her desire to have human contact and not be imprisoned leads her to seek a human with whom to interact, she finds heads in the wallpaper” (artickle 1 pg 288). When the imagery of the heads and the two bulbous eyes came into my mind I began to feel scared. My first thought was that perhaps the house was indeed haunted. I believed that the narrator

As webmd.com once said, “It's the rare couple that doesn't run into a few bumps in the road. If you recognize ahead of time, though, what those relationship problems might be, you'll have a much better chance of getting past them.”An example of a couple like this is in the short poem, “Hills Like White Elephants.” “In “Hills Like White Elephants,” author Ernest Hemingway describes a couple who are waiting for a train to come so they can depart to Madrid. While waiting for the train, they discuss how they have a dispute on rather they will go forward with an abortion or have the baby, making them a new family. Hemingway utilizes symbolism and tone in order to elucidate the idea that difficult decisions lead to a feeling of discomfort and lack of communication for the couple.