The Awakening And The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, published in 1899, is a semi-autobiographical short story depicting a young woman’s struggle with depression that is virtually untreated and her subsequent descent into madness. Although the story is centered on the protagonist’s obsessive description of the yellow wallpaper and her neurosis, the story serves a higher purpose as a testament to the feminist struggle and their efforts to break out of their domestic prison. With reference to the works of Janice Haney-Peritz’s, “Monumental Feminism and Literature’s

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

Despite differing story lines, Charlotte Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, John Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, depict the same suffering; the isolation that women have been forced to endure throughout history. In the time period that all three characters were placed, it was culturally acceptable for wives to be dominated by their husbands; their responsibility revolving around the needs of their children and those of their spouse. Most women simply did not have a means or an idea of how to rebel against their husbands. The women in all three stories are protagonists who have poor relationships of emotional attachment with their spouses. While the main character of Gilman’s story endures multiple psychotic

   In their works, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin show that freedom was not universal in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The three works, "The Yellow Wallpaper," "At the 'Cadian Ball," and "The Storm" expose the oppression of women by society.  This works also illustrate that those women who were passive in the face of this oppression risk losing not only their identity, but their sanity as well.

Kate Chopin's story The Awakening and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story The Yellow Wallpaper draw their power from two truths: First, each work stands as a political cry against injustice and at the socio/political genesis of the modern feminist movement. Second, each text is a gatekeeper of a new literary history. Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman seem to initiate a new phase in textual history where literary conventions are revised to serve an ideology representative of the "new" feminine presence. Two conventions in particular seem of central importance: "marriage" and "propriety".

Topics of great social impact have been dealt with in many different ways and in many different mediums. Beginning with the first women’s movement in the 1850’s, the role of women in society has been constantly written about, protested, and debated. Two women writers who have had the most impact in the on-going women’s movement are Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Awakening and The Yellow Wallpaper are two of feminist literature’s cornerstones and have become prolific parts of American literature. Themes of entrapment by social dictates, circumstance, and the desire for personal independence reside within each work and bond the two together.

Charlotte Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, originally printed on the New England Magazine became the model literature of feminism and women’s oppression after its publication in 1892. Gilman in her short story emphasises the roles of women and their oppression against a male dominant society during the 19th century. According to Elizabeth Carey’s article, “Controlling the Female Psyche: Assigned Gender Roles” and many other critics, Gilman’s story refers to the consequences and impact on women’s gender roles. In her article, she explains the difference between the roles of men and women, “the man’s role being that of the husband and rational thinker, and the woman’s role being that of the dutiful wife who does not question her husband’s authority.”(Carey 1) This passive role of women and the authoritative figure of men is a prime example of the relationship between John and the narrator and what ultimately drives the protagonist to madness in “The Yellow Wallpaper.” While I agree that the setting in which the story took place greatly affected the relationship between the narrator and her husband. Other factors like the undeveloped medical care for mental illness and the author’s own experience greatly added to the outcome of the story.

In the Declaration of Independence, the founding father Thomas Jefferson stated that “We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal….” Therefore, men and women are the same, and they have the equal right to pursue their happiness. However, the equality theory is not practical, and women have been fighting for their equal rights for a long history. Back to the late nineteenth century, women’s economic and social standards are much worse than man. In the fiction “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the author Charlotte Perkind Gilman, as the first person, deeply express her inner feelings, thoughts and perceptions, which truly reflects how the man dominated society destroy women’s life. The story tells us, the upper class family spend money living in a colonial mansion for three month. The women is suffering from postpartum depression, and her husband, as a physician, believes exercising, and eating can help her recovery. But the woman wants to write and goes to work, and she doesn’t like her room that covered with the queer yellow wallpaper. She is very depressed because nobody understand her, and her writing is banned by her husband, so she has nowhere to express herself. Towards the end, she sinks into false imagination of the wallpaper, and becomes a psychosis. In this story, setting, characters, and tones well illustrate that in the patriarchy society, women were undergoing sexism and they are suffering from repression and

The cult of true womanhood defined women as “ladies”(pure, diligent). When we talk about American woman, we have to specify their religion, sexual orientation, race, social class (it is therefore essentialist to talk about “women” in general. Depending on the group which they are in, certain coordinates are applicable.

In society, women were looked upon to be under the patriarchal control of men. People such as Donald Hall, writer of the book on Literary and Cultural Theory, explains his views on how “women have been denied social power and the right to various forms of self-expression (Hall 202).” Writers such as Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman, (authors of the “Awakening”/”The Story of an Hour” and “The Yellow-Wallpaper” respectively), have taken these patriarchal views and have incorporated them into various stories that portray the oppression that women face in these communities. Ultimately, their sole purpose of expressing such matters are to help identify how the patriarchal control of men evidently impacts how women can express themselves as individuals.

From the early 19th century, feminists and authors such as Donald Hall, have viewed feminism as “a recognition of the different degrees of social power that are granted to and exercised by women and men” (199). For several years, society has given both men and women control over their little kingdoms meaning that women ruled at home while men ruled over the world. This inequity inspired all feminists to embrace the general idea of feminism which refers to the belief that men and women deserve equality in all aspects of society. Feminists fought to ample the opportunities and resources given to women because the male gender primarily had the power in their hands. Men received power each day because it was thought that they were the strongest gender to enlarge the world’s economy and government; thus, taking advantage of their strength and keeping women under their control, also known as “social feminism.” Two well known authors who were advocates of the feminist movement are Charlotte Perkins Gilman the writer of “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Kate Chopin the writer of The Awakening and “The Story of an Hour.” Each of these stories reflect upon every woman 's life while being chained to their husbands. Throughout these stories, women desired for freedom because they were constantly oppressed by their men for being women. They stood up for what they believed and thanks to people like these, the world

When “The Yellow Wallpaper” is viewed within the scopes of New Historical, Feminist, Psychoanalytical, Ethical and Reader response criticisms, the reader should first be imparted with the understanding of who Charlotte Perkins Gilman was, what she stood for, the time period in which the story was written, and how aspects of her cultural and historical background related to it. Second, how the circumstances imposed upon women’s freedom of thought. Third, the reader shall ascertain how Freud’s Psychoanalytical theory of the Id, ego, and superego impact the narrative. Fourth, the ethical implications of the resting cure. Finally, how the audience’s viewpoint is challenged after reading the fictional short story.

Since the 19th century to the present day, feminism has evolved over periods of time, shaped and molded our structure of society into what it is today. Feminism, the exploration and critique of male power that challenges traditional sex roles has always played a major role and been expressed in classic and modern literacy. From press articles, to film productions. From plays to books. Along with this, feminist literary and cultural theories were born from feminists who also challenge and analyze the expressions and resistance between women’s roles and views and patriarchal, or the dominant power given to men over women, oppression. One way that such feminists observe and analyze this resistance is through the feminist analysis, a text that draws on and influences the various applications of women’s roles in society such as gender and class, sexuality, race/ethnicity, psychology, literary form, etc. But how can one text appeal to and demonstrate every possible perspective in feminism? The feminist analysis isn’t alone. Over time, various authors and feminists publishing well-known literary texts demonstrate a theme and challenge feminism that tests society’s structure. Authors such as Kate Chopin and her novel “The Awakening” include the everyday roles of women in a common household during the 19th century, with Chopin knowing to have been living in this time in America. Smaller texts such as “The Yellow Wallpaper”, a short story by Charlotte Gilman, are enough to demonstrate

John Henrik Clarke once said, “To hold people in oppression you have to convince them first that they are supposed to be oppressed.” The normality of women’s oppression affects the psyche and in return creates a number of mental illnesses within the nineteenth-century era. In The Awakening and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Chopin and Gilman utilize setting and foils to illustrate the role gender oppression contributes to mental illness.

Because of the situation that Gilman faced, she focuses her story on a woman’s struggle in the nineteenth century. During the nineteenth century, many women were pressured into the ideals of their society. According to Nancy M. Theriot, a woman was expected to be quiet, humble, and obedient; she was also expected to devote herself to her husband and family (68). Women in the nineteenth century were expected to follow and play along with society’s demands and ideals. Because of the ideals and expectations that were placed on women, many women in the late nineteenth century became psychologically distressed. Because of the reactions towards the societal ideals,