The Yellow Wallpaper: Women’s Rights in the Nineteenth Century

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’s story, The Yellow Wallpaper, portrays the life and mind of a woman suffering from post-partum depression in the late eighteenth century. Gilman uses setting to strengthen the impact of her story by allowing the distant country mansion symbolize the loneliness of her narrator, Jane. Gilman also uses flat characters to enhance the depth of Jane’s thoughts; however, Gilman’s use of narrative technique impacts her story the most. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses interior monologue to add impact to Jane’s progression into insanity, to add insight into the relationships in the story, and to increase the depth of Jane’s connection with the yellow wallpaper it self.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” tells the story of a woman suffering from post-partum depression, undergoing the sexist psychological treatments of mental health, that took place during the late nineteenth century. The narrator in Gilman’s story writes about being forced to do nothing, and how that she feels that is the worst possible treatment for her. In this particular scene, the narrator writes that she thinks normal work would do her some good, and that writing allows her to vent, and get across her ideas that no one seems to listen to. Gilman’s use of the rhetorical appeal pathos, first-person point of view, and forceful tone convey her message that confinement is not a good cure for mental health, and that writing,

In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator must deal with several different conflicts. She is diagnosed with “temporary nervous depression and a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 221). Most of her conflicts, such as, differentiating from creativity and reality, her sense of entrapment by her husband, and not fitting in with the stereotypical role of women in her time, are centered around her mental illness and she has to deal with them.

The narrator is diagnosed with a “nervous disorder” and is ordered by her physician, who also happens to be her husband, to abstain from most activity and all intellectual work. The same treatment Gilman was forced to take part in. The narrator is deprived of any stimulus or outlet for thought or action, and she begins to obsess over the yellow wallpaper. Her discovery of the women trapped in the pattern in the wallpaper symbolizes the pattern of behaviors and practices that trap the female sex. For Gilman, the conventional nineteenth-century middle-class marriage, with its rigid distinction between the “domestic” functions of the female and the “active” work of the male, ensured that women remained second-class citizens.

Life during the 1800s for a woman was rather distressing. Society had essentially designated them the role of being a housekeeper and bearing children. They had little to no voice on how they lived their daily lives. Men decided everything for them. To clash with society 's conventional views is a challenging thing to do; however, Charlotte Perkins Gilman does an excellent job fighting that battle by writing “The Yellow Wallpaper,” one of the most captivating pieces of literature from her time. By using the conventions of a narrative, such as character, setting, and point of view, she is capable of bringing the reader into a world that society

During the late 19th century women, as history demonstrates, were to remain confined to their societal expectations and roles. Women were thought of as the weaker sex, emotional, and fully dependent on their male counterparts, child-like. She was to be a pious woman, living a life of true domesticity. If a woman was not able to function in her role as a mother and submissive wife, then she was thought of to be simply undergoing hysteria. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, written in 1892, we are introduced to an unnamed woman suffering from this “nervous depression” (1). This woman and her husband John, who is a “physician of high standing” (1), are taking a three-month vacation in an old colonial mansion. It is in this haunted house that the reader is able to see the psychological deterioration of the woman as she lives under a demanding patriarchal society.

First and foremost, prior to the 19th century, women lived in a patriarchal system in which their views were constantly ignored and ridiculed. They were denied rights that made it difficult for them to gain any opportunity to perform outside their home. The stereotype in which their gender held at the time made them inferior to men. The “Culture of Domesticity” was the term used to describe a set of beliefs about women and gender roles in America and Great Britain (Cummings 1). The set of beliefs described that since men were busy working, women should be at home. An aspect of the Culture of Domesticity describes the ideal woman. This ideal woman, also called “True Woman”, must uphold “4 main principles: piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity” (Cummings 1). The combination of these principles expected a woman to be supportive

“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.

A brave woman sang a sombre song from inside a birdcage in the late 19th century. As a novelist and a well-known feminist, Charlotte Perkins Gilman fearlessly spoke up about her concepts on freedom in her masterpiece, “The Yellow Wallpaper”. She proposed a big issue -divorce- around that time. In this semi-autobiographical story, she describes her conflict of marital discord. Gilman intertwines her frustrations about a relationship with her husband and depicts the distress through many symbols, so that people should be aware what genuine happiness as a human being is.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-paper” serves as a perfect example of how women are treated in the 19th century. The distracting details both surrounding and filling the new house that the main character and her husband move into haunt her. Throughout the story, the main character, as she observes the house while in isolation, notices the true meaning in life, specifically for women. Gilman’s piece unveils the unfortunate requirements that women must meet in order to become accepted into society. The imagery and description of the house mentioned in “The Yellow Wall-paper” holds a much more symbolized sense reassuring the main character about women’s roles in life, according to humanity.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow-Wall Paper” is, on the surface, a story about a woman driven mad due to a combination of post-partum depression and the potentially devastating effects of the treatment methods employed at the time. However, the story is also, in a deeper sense, about the fundamental identity of women in the 19th century. Gilman gives voice to this issue by painting a picture of the life of Jane, the protagonist in the story. She gives us an intimate look into the character’s psyche as she skids down the slope towards madness due to her virtual imprisonment and blatant disregard for her thoughts, emotions, and feelings. Not only does she give us a sense of a woman’s identity and place in this time but we also get a unique insight into the character’s own feeling of self-identity through the imaginary woman - who the protagonists discovers trapped in the wall paper of the room she herself is trapped in.

Charlotte Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is centered on the deteriorating psychological condition of the female narrator. As a woman in a male dominating society in the 19th century, the narrator has no control over her life. This persistence eventually evolves into her madness. The insanity is triggered by her change in attitude towards her husband, the emergent obsession with the wallpaper and the projection of herself as the women behind the wallpaper. The “rest cure” which was prescribed by her physician husband, created the ideal environment for her madness to extend because, it was in her imagination that she had some freedom and control.

Domestic ideology is a series of related ideas that characterized the family home as the domain of the woman, and that based these ideas on the belief that women were innately weaker to the man. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen show great stories about women not falling into the domestic ideology role. The authors demonstrate this through the ability to properly function, being an efficient mother, and not meeting the expectations of the domestic ideology.

The house has at times been a symbol of women’s roles, between 1944 and 1982 the relationship women had with the house changed. This relationship change is indicative to the changing times and the role women played in the house, in the family, and in society. The influences that I believe initiated these changes fall into three themes: 1. The marriage relationship and outside paid work, 2. Education and its impact on femininity, and 3. Technology and its impact on domesticity. The three themes address issues that women navigated as society changed as their roles in the home and outside of the home changed. I will briefly address each theme and then delve into the relationship between marriage and work outside of the home.