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What Is The Oppression Of Women In The Yellow Wallpaper

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In the short story The Yellow Wallpaper, the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses this story give a voice to the women that were dealing with oppression from men. Women during the time when this story was written were almost exclusively under the dominance of males. They were mainly house wives, and did what the male forced them to do. Many women were working in the house, and not allowed to leave, consequently making them lonely and depressed. Because of this, women were not as educated as men were, and did not have the power to do what they wanted to accomplish. The narrator is locked into an upstairs room with this wallpaper that she describes as “repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight”( p.480) . The color yellow means “the color of sickness” The wallpaper symbolizes her oppression. The narrator is put into this upstairs room by her herself to rest. The purpose of the rest cure is to heal her mental illnesses just by being inactive. “I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus” (p.479). Its inferred that the narrator has no real input on how to fix her problems. “I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia.” (p.483) We see thatAfter this, John carries her back up to the room and tells her that he loves her but the only way she will ever get

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