The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis

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.

Through a woman's perspective of assumed insanity, Charlotte Perkins Gilman comments on the role of the female in the late nineteenth century society in relation to her male counterpart in her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." Gilman uses her own experience with mental instability to show the lack of power that women wielded in shaping the course of their psychological treatment. Further she uses vivid and horrific imagery to draw on the imagination of the reader to conceive the terrors within the mind of the psychologically wounded.

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

In 1892, Charlotte Perkins Gilman published a short story entitled The Yellow Wallpaper, and since its publication, it has been regarded as an important piece in the beginning of feminist literature. In addition to this view of the piece, there is more clarity through a Marxist reading and criticism of the text. A central point of Marxist critical theory is that the arts, philosophy, law, and politics, rest on the basis of socioeconomics – class structure. The discussion that Gilman conjures about socioeconomics – that women are, essentially, in class entirely their own – reflects the socioeconomic situation she lived in. The domination of men over women in this time, the hierarchy of a capitalist society and the cultural conditioning that comes about because of the idealized roles of each person in the society define the world Gilman and her narrator were living in. Women perceived as having mental issues were, in this world, simply sent away

In her story, The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman expresses exasperation towards the separate male and female roles expected of her society, and the evident repressed rights of a woman versus the active duties of a man. The story depicts the methods taken to cure a woman of her psychological state during Gilman’s time, and delineates the dominant cure of the time period, “the resting cure,” which encouraged the restraint of the imagination ("The Yellow Wallpaper: Looking Beyond the Boundaries") Gilman uses the unnamed narrator to represent the average repressed woman of her time and how her needs were neglected in an attempt to mark a fixed distinction between the standards and expectations of men and women. John, the narrator’s husband, take the designated and patriarchal role of a man who believes he knows everything there is to know about the human mind. His belief of his superior knowledge pushes him to condescend, overshadow, and misunderstand his wife. As a result, his wife loses control of her life and escapes into her own fantasy world, where she is able dominate her imagination, free her mind, and fall into insanity. Gilman describes her era’s approach toward female psychology in order to criticize the patriarchal society she lived in as well as to reveal its effects on the women of her time.

When The Yellow Wallpaper was published in 1892 the first wave of feminism was occurring, which probably had an influence on Gilman’s attitude and writing. Women’s desire to have more opportunities and being able to vote are the main characteristics of first-wave feminism. The rebellion against domesticity also played an important role in the movement as it created an uproar when women started to act “unladylike” (Rampton, 2015). Further, Gilman indirectly criticizes the men’s reaction to the feminism wave in The Yellow Wallpaper. The husband in the story clearly wants to ensure that his wife doesn’t begin to act out by belittling her, keeping her domestic, and making sure she stays under his control. He denies her requests to change the room or to let her visit family, teaching her that she doesn’t actually have a choice. Hence, it is a prime example of the suppression of women in the 19th

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts a young woman’s gradual descent into insanity due to her entrapment, both mentally and physically, in the restrictive cult of domesticity. Through the narrator’s creeping spiral into madness, Gilman seeks to shed light upon the torturous and constraining societal conditions in which women are expected to live, that permeates throughout all aspects of their lives. At first glance to an average reader unfamiliar with Gilman’s history, “The Yellow Wallpaper” seems to just provide a tale about the oppressive relationship between the man and the woman in a domestic environment, however, once Gilman’s own personal life is uncovered, the story takes on a new level of depth.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman once said, ‘’There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. Might as well speak of a female liver’’. Gilman’s belief that there’s no difference in means of mentality between men or women demonstrated through ‘’The Yellow Wallpaper’’. Gilman symbolically portrays that women suffer from psychological disorders caused by lack of love, care, and a constant pressure of secondary roles and personal unimportance in social life. 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 frame where women were oppressed. The short story can be analyzed in depth by both the psycho-analytic theory and

“The Yellow Wallpaper” was written in 1890 around the beginning of the feminist movement. The author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, uses her short story to illustrate the negative effects of unequal treatment against women. She uses the narrator's husband, John, as an example of the male superiority thriving in her time. As the narrator's illness worsens, the style of the narrative develops to accompany her mental state. Throughout the narrative, Gilman uses symbolism and style to illustrate the severity of unequal treatment towards women.

Women have been seen as lesser, fragile, and intellectually inferior to men in Western societies for centuries. Luckily strong and unrelenting women have come before us, changing the way women have been perceived and understood and making the current period in Western history the most favorable for women, yet. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was one of the aforementioned influential women who challenged the the statues quo with her dynamic short story written in 1892 entitled "The Yellow Wallpaper. " Some may see "The Yellow Wallpaper" as a story about a woman descending into insanity after postpartum depression. However when looking at the story from a feminist perspective, I argue that Gilman wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" to demonstrate how women

“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman illustrates the patriarchy and the treatment of women in society during the nineteenth century. This is evident through two parts. First, one sees the treatment of women directly through the narrator’s interaction with her doctor and husband, John. Finally, it is clear through the symbolic wallpaper as well as other physical characteristics of the room that’s she is trapped by societal norms of the time both physically and symbolically. The wallpaper is especially important as it acts as an explicit visual representation of the narrator’s realization of the true nature of her status in society as a woman. One can see what it was like to be a woman during this era of male dominance. “The Yellow Wallpaper” question gender roles and societal conventions at the time by showing how a woman who believes she is being held down, or oppressed, is considered to be suffering from a mental illness.

Naturally, patriarchal language became conventional, and women’s voice was quite weak. Masculine discourse, including medical ones had a powerful voice and great authority in both private and public spheres. It was also regarded as rational, practical, and observable one (Treichler 65) and women’s voice was disgraced as irrational, unlikely, and unpractical. So as a feminist writer, Gilman challenges masculine voices in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Inside of the story, the narrator’s husband makes diagnosis about her symptoms and his voices are full of confidence: “You know the place is doing you good” (44).

She wrote this story at the time America was in the process of overcoming discrimination against women. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the author managed to strongly paint an image of the average woman in the 19th century. In the past, Gilman was a great feminist and claimed that women were treated with lower expectations and standards, not only because of the economic reliance they had on men, but also because of the mindsets men had from being influenced by cultural norms. Through out The Yellow Wallpaper, the author amplifies these beliefs by basing the story off of a woman’s response to these certain oppressions. In 1926 she stated that her work was undeniably addressing women liberalization and the faulty actions in the way the narrator’s husband, John, treated her.

Each time I read “The Yellow Wallpaper” I always interpret the ending the same exact way—the narrator, void of any mental stimuli, became obsessed with the wallpaper to the point of a psychotic break. As a result of her obsession, the narrator began to see things that weren’t there, slowly beginning to believe that a woman was trapped in the wallpaper. However, the narratives of the woman imprisoned within the wallpaper mimicked the narrator’s own predicament, thus leading her to believe that she was the trapped woman. To add even more confusion to the already hectic ending, a character named Jane is mentioned at the last moment. However, it could be argued the character named Jane is, in fact, the narrator herself. This is due to the fact

Depression and fiction can work well together, especially if a person can create a well thought-out story. When it came to creating this fictional story, author Charlotte Perkins Gilman used her postpartum depression as a certain kind of coping mechanism and it became such a powerful narrative that had implications (which were broad) for and toward women. “The Yellow Wallpaper” tells the story about a woman heading (or descending) into madness that has resulted in hysteria. It’s like a doctor telling someone they “should rest and sleep it off later” kind of ordeal. Overall, this story seems like it is mostly about the attacks and overpowering women in society. The narrator and the yellow wallpaper of the story are symbolic for women that are