Symbolism In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman is known as the first American writer who has feminist approach. Gilman criticises inequality between male and female during her life, hence it is mostly possible to see the traces of feminist approach in her works. She deals with the struggles and obstacles which women face in patriarchal society. Moreover, Gilman argues that marriages cause the subordination of women, because male is active, whereas female plays a domestic role in the marriage. Gilman also argues that the situation should change; therefore women are only able to accomplish full development of their identities. At this point, The Yellow Wallpaper is a crucial example that shows repressed woman’s awakening. It is a story of a woman who

The structure of the text, particularly evident in the author’s interactions with her husband, reveals the binary opposition between the façade of a middle-class woman living under the societal parameters of the Cult of Domesticity and the underlying suffering and dehumanization intrinsic to marriage and womanhood during the nineteenth century. While readers recognize the story for its troubling description of the way in which the yellow wallpaper morphs into a representation of the narrator’s insanity, the most interesting and telling component of the story lies apart from the wallpaper. “The Yellow Wallpaper” outwardly tells the story of a woman struggling with post-partum depression, but Charlotte Perkins Gilman snakes expressions of the true inequality faced within the daily lives of nineteenth century women throughout the story. Although the climax certainly surrounds the narrator’s overpowering obsession with the yellow wallpaper that covers the room to which her husband banished her for the summer, the moments that do not specifically concern the wallpaper or the narrator’s mania divulge a deeper and more powerful understanding of the torturous meaning of womanhood.

There have been multiple conceptions about “The Yellow Wallpaper” over the true significance of the story and it has been evaluated by many scholarly writers for several generations. The story was written by the poet Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the nineteenth-century and it conveyed ideas about symbolism, feminism and individualism. It provides the reader with her viewpoint on society’s subjugation of women by the patriarchal model that reserved power for men. The gender ideology stressed that women and men were to conform to distinctive roles where males were to handle being the breadwinner of the home and women were to conduct being the housekeeper. Also, women started to rebel against these expected norms of society, it began by women

The “Yellow Wall-Paper” is a reflection of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s personal situations, regarding the protection of the rights of woman. She provides a critique on traditional feminine roles, and women’s desperation to get out of them. In the short story, the author depicts the idea that women conforming to the norms of society can be driven to destruction. Her criticism  of gender conflicts is portrayed through the journal entries of the narrator. In order to illustrate her feminist concerns about gender equality, Gilman employs the characters of John, Jennie, and the narrator.

The narrator, who is never named, is depicted as a woman who is confined and repressed based on her gender. During the late nineteenth century, Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” as the feminist movement was going through its first surge and was continuously expanding. Gilman was considered “the idol of radical feminists” (Degler 21) and the “most original and challenging mind, which the women’s movement produced” (Degler 21). One of the major themes found throughout Gilman’s stories is “to show the disastrous and all-pervasive effects upon women and upon society of the continued suppression of her sex” ( Degler 22). This theme is depicted in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” when the narrator hints at being confined in her marriage, by saying “he is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction” (Gilman 210). The narrator is unable to see how much her husband’s confinement is affecting her well being. All of the restrictions that were put on women during the nineteenth century began the formation of Gilman’s feminist character (Degler 24). The ending of “The Yellow Wallpaper” shows the female character breaking free from these pervasive social norms.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilmans, The Yellow Wallpaper, the author presents a seemingly insane woman, who is trapped in her own bedroom. Also Gilman focuses her writing on the topic of a male-dominated society. During the late 1800’s, women lacked the majority vote in any major decision. This book was written before the Woman’s Suffrage Movement and the ratification of the 19th Amendment. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, “Gilman attempts to show the ill effects of cultural restrictions and forced inactivity on women's lives during the late Victorian age” (Joyce and Wilson 1).

The short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a perfect example of a story that needs to be reanalyzed 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 showing 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 of the female brain.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short piece, The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator faces many adversities as a woman such as: mental health, and living in a time period when they are not treated equal to men. Gilman’s personal life is reflected through this story because she dealt with similar challenges the narrator herself has to overcome. “Her lectures, novels, short stories, magazine articles (including her best known work, “The Yellow Wallpaper”), and nonfiction books challenged the dominant ideas about women’s role in society and helped shape the movement for women’s suffrage and women’s rights. (Dreier, 2016)” The theme and symbols not only illustrate how the roles of men and women are portrayed unequal to one another, but also the transition to insanity that comes from enforced suppression. The state of ignorance placed on women is shown throughout the story by the obstacles, reactions, and mental state.

Many women tried every different way to reach women rights and equality. One off the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” from her own experience life and many other liked her. This short story tells about a woman who has a mental and emotionally illness in during the 19th century. At that time women were much more restricted in their activities and also were governed by their husband. Gilman, in “The Yellow Wallpaper described the character as a married women with a newly baby. This woman also like to write and mixed with the society and going to work. But she was for bidden to practice her freedom. This women was struggling with unsymatic marriage, preventing from writing, and therefore she found a substitute outlet through the wallpaper.

The “Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, was written in 1890. Gilman was a feminist and a champion for the financial independence of women. Furthermore, the story was written in the heart of the Victorian era, and the attitudes towards women therein reflect the attitudes of the time. These attitudes are ones of disbelief in the thoughts and feelings of women, and worse, stripping them of their autonomy. As is such, the work serves as a feminist piece.

The citizens of the United States have progressed so much over the past few decades that it becomes hard to imagine what life was like before present day terms. Not only has it advanced so far technologically, but the women in America’s society have covered a substantial amount of ground especially in the middle of the 19th century. Feminism became a huge issue worldwide and America was no exception. Author Charlotte Perkins Gilman demonstrates why feminism is so important with her work, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by channeling her own experiences to show readers that without feminism, the life of a woman is very different.

The Yellow Wallpaper is a story about women’s repression in the 19th century. This story shows an immense difference between men and women inside society. While the men are the one making the decisions and taking responsibility, women must accept their obligations. The protagonist is repressed and appear for the effect of the oppression of women in society. This effect is develop by the use of complex symbols such as, the room, the wallpaper, the window which facilitates her oppression as well as her self-expression. Charlotte Gilman writes from her own personal experiences and emanates a strong message about how males dominated society. Gilman uses her personal bout to with postpartum depression to generate a powerful fictional narrative which has broad implications for women. Women were considered weaker than men, which meant they had to adapt to the domestic sphere. Gilman wrote many other books about feminism, one of them is “Herland” which is about the assumptions of women’s roles in society. Gilman states that the meaning of her story extends beyond an isolated, individual situation. Women were treated as second class citizens. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the wallpaper symbolizes the narrator’s growing repression.

When asked to describe the role of a woman in society, many would use words such as caretaker, mother, wife; however, none of these words imply that the woman is an independent entity from her familial duties. This stifled role begins a feminist movement which employs many avenues to call for change in the hopes of achieving gender equality for all women. One prominent writer, Charlotte Gilman, penned an exceptionally powerful short-story she titled, "The Yellow Wall-Paper" as her contribution to this cause. In an era which depicted women in the shadows of men, Gilman yearned to bring the social injustice of women to the forefront of conversation. Moreover, Gilman used her personal experiences of emotional, moral and intellectual conflict to

The story. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Gilman is ultimately, discreetly, a story about male dominance in subtext form. The story, written in the 1800’s, is a time where women were looked upon as having no affect on society other than bearing children, and maintaining households. At that time, there wasn’t any means for self expression for women, as men were the one who dominated society, but the world. With the story being showcased in the 1800’s, it defines the traditional gender roles, through the perspective of male dominance in marriage, with the anonymous woman to be more in a submissive position. With the story holding a concept of a “shackled and imprisoned” female being ruled by a velvet glove, the theme of patriarchal authority and the psychological dominance is ultimately shown within the relationship. From the onset of this story, the questionable relationship between the protagonist and John is on the spectrum of the gender inequity; causing readers to question if John’s points in the story were actually related to his wife’s illness. He dismisses her opinions, her thoughts, and judgements on the house, and in general. He even goes as far as to speak to her as a child, calling her “little girl.” As a reader, you see John’s “care” of the protagonist results in negative effects. As the story progresses, the protagonist starts challenging John’s

In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman creates a character of a young depressed woman, on the road to a rural area with her husband, so that she can be away from writing, which appears to have a negative effect on her psychological state. Lanser says her husband “heads a litany of benevolent prescriptions that keep the narrator infantilized, immobilized, and bored literally out of her mind. Reading or writing herself upon the wallpaper allows the narrator to escape her husband’s sentence and to achieve the limited freedom of madness which constitutes a kind of sanity in the face of the insanity of male dominance” (432). In the story both theme and point of view connect and combine to establish a powerful picture of an almost prison-type of treatment for conquering depression. In the story, Jane battles with male domination, because she is informed by both her husband and brother countless brain shattering things about her own condition that she does not agree with. She makes every effort to become independent, and she desires to escape from the burdens of that domination. The Yellow Wallpaper is written from the character’s point of view in a structure similar to a diary, which explains her time spent in her home. The house is huge and old with annoying yellow wallpaper in the bedroom. The character thinks that there is a woman behind bars in the design of the wallpaper. She devotes a great deal of her