The Way of Women’s Resistances to Patriarchy in “the Yellow Wallpaper”

In the 19th century, the female gender faced limited opportunity and the widespread belief of inferiority to the male gender. Women were viewed as being frail, weak, and in constant need of a man to help her do even the most basic tasks. This resulted in devastating effects on the female psyche, including debasement of character and even catastrophic mental illness. Literature written by the women of the aforementioned time period conveys the isolation, humiliation, and agony experienced by the females of that time. The short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, serves as an excellent example of such a piece of literature. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” illustrates subordinate standing of the female role in the 19th century and how such social conditions can have a devastating effects impact on the human mind. (Wilson)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses her short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” to show how women undergo oppression by gender roles. Gilman does so by taking the reader through the terrors of one woman’s changes in mental state. The narrator in this story becomes so oppressed by her husband that she actually goes insane. The act of oppression is very obvious within the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” and shows how it changes one’s life forever.

In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman discusses the oppression men have towards women through the story of a nameless narrator during the 19th century. In the story, the unknown narrator, a woman, is telling her struggle for freedom and her fight to escape from the subordination in her marriage with a physician. In the story, the narrator suffers an illness that prevents her from doing things she likes such as writing. Throughout her illness, the narrator slowly becomes aware of her situation and then starts to fight to change her living condition with her husband. Through the use of two major symbols established throughout the text, Gilman brings awareness of women’s struggle to end their oppression by men and their fight to change the way society is dominated by men. In addition, the symbols used by Gilman underline the way women suffrage awareness slowly began to spread during the 19th century.

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” she discusses some of the issues found in 19th century society such as women’s oppression and the treatment of mental illness. Many authors throughout history have written stories that mimic their own lives and we see this in the story. We see Gilman in the story portrayed as Jane, a mentally unstable housewife who cannot escape her husband’s oppression or her own mind. Gilman reveals a life of depression and women’s oppression through her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper.”

During the nineteenth century, women and men played vastly different roles. While men had the free will to choose the life paths they desired, women lacked such privileges. Women, instead, were expected to tend to domestic responsibilities. Unlike men, they were unable to voice their opinions, instead, myriads of them lived monotonous lives with their, often condescending, husbands. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, portrays a woman in the nineteenth century descending into psychosis. After the birth of her daughter, the unnamed narrator presumably endures postpartum depression and is forced into bed rest as a cure. In her male-dominated society, the narrator often feels as though she is at a loss of control over her life. Despite what she believes is best for her own betterment, her husband, John, overrides her inputs. She is stripped away from the outside world and left with nothing more than her concealed diary entries and the horrid yellow wallpaper of her bedroom. Although John seemingly wants the best for his wife, his dismissiveness towards her mental state and solicitations necessarily cause her to become deranged; her breakdown is a result of feeling powerless as she is encaged in a house she does not care for, restricted from her activities, and her inability to communicate effectively.

“Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in "the Yellow Wallpaper"”. Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature 3.1/2 (1984): 61–77. Web. This article is about the narrator is sick and the diagnosis of postpartum or nervous depression. This article disguised as an acceptable feminine topic, the yellow wallpaper comes to occupy the narrator’s entire reality. This article illuminates particular points of conflict between patriarchal language and women’s discourse. The article explains the narrator’s final proclamation is both triumphant and horrifying, madness in the story is both positive and negative. This article discusses the linguistic reform is hollow unless accompanied by changes in attitudes and socio-economic conditions that also favor women’s equality. I can use this article because it is accurate and

Immediately in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” readers are able to tell that the protagonist feels trapped in the room, in which she is being placed. The female narrator also mentions to us that her husband “John is a physician, and perhaps –– (I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind –– perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster” (Stetson 1892, 129). That is to say, this statement clearly indicates that science triumphs over the fantasy of religion. Therefore, John intellectually dominates his wife as a result of this view and his gender. Throughout the story, readers are able to observe themes from “The Yellow Wallpaper,” such as powerlessness, patriarchy, and lack of independence. As a result, Gilman 's protagonist does not have a room of her own. Despite, the struggles that the narrator faces in the room, “it makes [her] think of English places that you read about” (Stetson 1892, 130). Basically, the narrator tries to make herself feel comfortable while she is in the room and she is also able to express herself on paper, although her husband, John insists that she should not. According to Gilman’s protagonist, “I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal¬––having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition” (Stetson 1892, 129). This statement explains that the narrator expresses a need for independence by removing herself from the

The queering of gender roles in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman discussed through the destabilization of the gender roles of the 19th century commonly attributed to women and how the narrator threatened those through writing as a profession. The narrator is in direct opposition to the separate sphere mentality which is implemented by her husband and his sister, Jennie. Jennie is the angel of the house and the narrator is shunned to the yellow wallpaper and trapped. Her masculinity disallows her from being a woman and there is no other place for her in the society. Because of the imprisonment meant to ‘cure’ her the narrator escapes these roles through madness.

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.

According to Oxford English Dictionary, patriarchy is defined as the “predominance of men in positions of power and influence in society, with cultural values and norms favoring men.” This social structure in particular was prevalent during Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s time and played a large role in her involvement with feminism and women’s rights. Along with the patriarchal influences, Gilman provides an autobiographical basis upon which she built the framework for “The Yellow Wallpaper” as she was forced to undergo the dreaded “Rest Cure” depicted in the short story. Through the eyes of the narrator, Gilman provides illumination regarding the role of women imposed by the patriarchal society of the 19th Century and the implications of such

In the time that this story was written and took place, women were seen as inferior compared to men and the only thing they were supposed to do was spend time at home and take care of the house. As shown by the doctors in the story, women were not supposed to express themselves by writing or doing anything creative. “In the final words of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator describes how she must crawl over John’s astonished body. Like the transvitivism of the narrator’s ‘self-realization,’ this closing image displaces a conjunction of erotic and aggressive impulses, a conjunction which once again suggests that by identifying herself with the wallpaper’s shadow-woman the narrator has firmly installed herself in the realm of the imaginary.(Haney-Peritz, 8)” This quote from “Monumental feminism and literature’s ancestral house: Another look at ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,” describes Jane crawling over John which shows feminism because of the fact that women were controlled by their husbands, her crawling over him showed an escape from the solitary confinement he prescribed to her.

The treatment of woman was oppressive in the 1800s while the men were the ones in charge. Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper,” in this the narrator shows how her husband, John, treated her. “The Yellow Wallpaper,” follows a woman going through some mental illness and her decline into madness after being told what to do constantly. Women were not seen as equals to males either socially or intellectually during the time of the story.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story about a woman who has a mental illness but cannot heal due to her husband’s lack of belief. The story appears to take place during a time period where women were oppressed. Women were treated as second rate people in society during this time period. Charlotte Perkins Gilman very accurately portrays the thought process of the society during the time period in which “The Yellow Wallpaper” is written. Using the aspects of Feminist criticism, one can analyze “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman through the dialogue through both the male and female perspective, and through the symbol found in the story.

In the article “‘Too Terribly Good to Be Printed’: Charlotte Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’” Conrad Shumaker explains the genius of “The Yellow Wallpaper” and how its themes reflect the patriarchal society of the time period. Shumaker identifies one theme as the detriment of suppressing the narrator’s sense of self and that “by trying to ignore and repress her imagination, in short, John eventually brings about the very circumstance he wants to prevent” (590). John confines his wife in a yellow “nursery” in order to “cure” her of her illness, banning her from writing and discouraging her imagination. His plan backfires when her mind, unable to find a proper outlet, latches onto the yellow wallpaper that eventually drives her to madness. Another theme that Shumaker points out is that the dynamic of a domineering husband and an obedient wife is a cage that the narrator is desperately trying to free herself from. John constantly dismisses the narrator’s opinions and thoughts and insists that he knows what is best for her. Shumaker points out that the husband, a representation of the patriarchal society, is clearly depicted as the villain and that he “attempts to ‘cure’ her through purely physical means, only to find he has destroyed her in the process” (592). At the end of the story, because of her confinement and inability to express herself, the narrator fully descends into insanity, “escaping” the

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story told from the perspective of a woman who’s believed to be “crazy”. The narrator believes that she is sick while her husband, John, believes her to just be suffering from a temporary nervous depression. The narrator’s condition worsens and she begins to see a woman moving from behind the yellow wallpaper in their bedroom. The wallpaper captures the narrator’s attention and initial drives her mad. Charlotte Gilman uses a lot of personal pieces into her short story, from her feministic views to her personal attributes. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story written from a feminist and autobiographical standpoint and includes elements, like symbols and perspective that the reader can analyze in different ways.