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The Yellow Wallpaper Essay

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The Yellow Wallpaper, a powerful fictional narrative written by feminist author Charlotte Perkins Gilman, addressed the confining nature of the sphere of domesticity assigned the members of her sex during the nineteenth century. A women’s rights activist and former sufferer of postpartum depression, Perkins Gilman produced this feminist masterpiece with the intention of giving expression to two factions of underrepresented women: the unhappily married and the victims of postpartum depression, which due the poor medical attention paid them at the time, rarely found peace henceforth. The primary means by which Perkins Gilman demonstrated societal inequality presents itself in the union between the narrator and her spouse John, the power imbalance …show more content…

Symbolic of domesticity, the yellow wallpaper confines the woman, which represents the narrator and all her sex, to a sphere in which there exists no opportunity for intellectual advancement, much in comparison to the method of contemporary patriarchal society. Perkins Gilman cleverly selects the colour yellow for the wallpaper, the psychological implications of which effectively strengthen the symbolism behind it. Associated with happiness, yellow represents the happiness established for women by patriarchal society; however, as the story progresses the narrator reveals the dissatisfaction produced by the limitations of her sex in that ideal: women consider themselves confined by a sphere of domesticity, not contented to live in it. The psychological implications of the chosen colour strengthen the juxtaposition of yellow with the wallpaper more than could an alternative. For example, the colour red, which represents danger, directly points out the repercussions of confining social spheres; but it possesses not the power to subtly suggest the resulting consequences, in turn evoking a deeper comprehension of the injustice against women upon understanding the contrasting

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