Oppression In The Yellow Wallpaper

  “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a symbolic tale of one woman’s struggle to break free from her mental prison.  Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows the reader how quickly insanity takes hold when a person is taken out of context and completely isolated from the rest of the world.  The narrator is a depressed woman who cannot handle being alone and retreats into her own delusions as opposed to accepting her reality.  This mental prison is a symbol for the actual repression of women’s rights in society and we see the consequences when a woman tries to free herself from this social slavery.

Central to the story is the wallpaper itself. It is within the wallpaper that the narrator finds her hidden self and her eventual damnation/freedom. Her obsession with the paper begins subtly and then consumes both the narrator and the story. Once settled in the long-empty “ancestral estate,” a typical gothic setting, the narrator is dismayed to learn that her husband has chosen the top-floor nursery room for her. The room is papered in horrible yellow wallpaper, the design of which “commit[s] every artistic sin”(426). The design begins to fascinate the narrator and she

     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 Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman can by read in many different ways.  Some think of it as a tragic horror story while others may find it to be a tale of a woman trying to find her identity in a male-dominated society.  The story is based on an episode in Gilman's life when she suffered from a nervous disease called melancholia.  A male specialist advised her to "live a domestic a life as far as possible.. and never to touch a pen, brush or pencil..."   (Gilman, 669).   She lived by these guidelines for three months until she came close to suffering from a nervous breakdown.  Gilman then decided to continue writing, despite the physicians advice, and overcame her illness.

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 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

It is noticed from the plot of the story, the images and metaphors used in it that the author wants to draw readers’ attention to feminism especially to the female character who is trying to practice her hobby which is writing. Moreover, Gilman shows that the woman is trying to overcome the oppression she was suffering from, in order to free herself from it and find equality in the society. In the story, readers are exposed to the levels of women’s oppression, and the author expressed that greatly by using the yellow wallpaper as a symbol of that ugly

In the short story The Yellow Wallpaper, the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman, portrays the main character as a victim of oppression. Oppression is defined as being heavily burdened mentally or physically by troubles or adverse conditions. John’s wife along with other women during the 1800’s, were subject to the stricter laws of society. The narrator, known as the main character, was applied with less rights and privileges. An example on how the narrator was subjected to oppression is the husband, the wallpaper, and the mansion.

The narrator feels very imprisoned in the house and tries to find a way to escape it. During the narrator’s rest cure treatment, she has attached herself to the wallpaper: She would “lay there for hours trying to decide whether that front pattern and the back pattern really did move together or separately”(260-261). This was the narrator’s way of escaping the oppression she was in. The wallpaper often seemed confusing to her, but she was determined to figure it out: “I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself”(301-302), everytime John takes of her illness lightly, her interest in the wallpaper grows. This is a direct reflection of her loneliness and isolation from her treatment. The speaker’s rest cure treatment directed her not to do any activities that would make her think intellectually or imaginatively, so she is forced to stay isolated from people, books, and chores. However, as her loneliness grows intensely, she finds relief in writing, something she was told not to do. The narrator would often have to hide the fact that she writes when nobody's around, and when someone comes while she is writing she records “I must not let [them] find me writing”(141-142). The oppression the narrator has been put through has made her stronger mentally, she starts to become more and more possessive of the wallpaper and tries

and "gates that lock". At the top of the stairs is a gate that keeps

Throughout history and cultures today, women have been beaten, verbally abused, and taught to believe they have no purpose in life other than pleasing a man. Charlotte Perkins Gillam uses her short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" as a weapon to help break down the walls surrounding women, society has put up. This story depicts the life of a young woman struggling with postpartum depression, whose serious illness is overlooked, by her physician husband, because of her gender. Gillman 's writing expresses the feelings of isolation, disregarded, and unworthiness the main character Jane feels regularly. This analysis will dive into the daily struggles women face through oppression, neglect, and physical distinction; by investigating each section

     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.

The chief source of the narrator 's mental state is her dictatorial husband who suppresses her emotional and creative inclinations and compels her to focus on the objects that surround her. This apathy shoves her deeper into insanity. John confines her in a room that has no getaway with bars on the windows and fixed bed, which is “nailed down.” Her developing insanity is a form of rebellion and a way to gain her own independence from marriage as well. Her fight to set the woman in the wallpaper free denotes her battle for freedom. This paragraph is extremely important to the story, portraying not only how the woman feels about herself, but also what her husband 's therapy is doing to her. Her description of the paper being "dull enough to confuse the eye" and "constantly irritating and provoking study" is alluding to her sense of inferiority and burden. The "lame uncertain curves" she speaks of are likely to reference the ridiculous suggestions that he husband makes for her, and "suicide" being the fate that is destined to result if followed. The "unheard of contradictions" express the faultiness of John 's methods. She describes him at one point: "He says no one but myself can

In this story, the author uses many different literary devices to express the ongoing theme of feminism and the oppression of women. During the Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman develops a narrator to achieve her goal who once revealed her feelings but is also recumbent to decrease her own evaluation. She also develops a not trustworthy narrator, which allows her to conduct serval different emotions as her charter mood develops. This allows Gilman to put her two theories about her main character; either one is insane or one is having discomfort from these feelings of oppression. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman perfectly use of symbolism, conflict, and setting presents her theme of feminist suppression.

Throughout the Victorian era, women were viewed as secondary, dependent on men, and only capable of handling domestic duties. Women could not perform certain actions, such as voting, or go in public without their husband’s consent; women were controlled and concealed by social standards set by men. In the same way, the mysterious woman-like figure in the wallpaper is trapped by the pattern. Once the narrator becomes fascinated with the patterns on the wall, she discovers that the front pattern moves at night becomes the woman inside shakes it trying to escape. The narrator writes that “she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern---it strangles so” (Gilman 388). With this quote, Gilman suggests that the wallpaper is holding the figure captive, just as men hindered women from reaching their full potential in the nineteenth-century. Once the narrator notices the woman in the paper, she was determined to set the figure free. The woman in the wall “began to crawl and shake the pattern” (Gilman 389), so the narrator helps the woman peel the paper off the walls to set her free. The narrator begins to characterize herself with the woman in the wall because of the confinement and oppression from her husband and believes that she