Theme Of Freedom In The Yellow Wallpaper

Throughout history, women have struggled to be seen as equals and have had to fight for their freedom from the roles society placed upon them. Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman both use their literary works to show the challenges women went through, and how they battled for the freedoms they desperately wanted. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story about a woman that goes to a summer home to rest and get well under the supervision of her husband who is also a physician. Her husband decided it would be best if she sat in a room alone and did nothing. In the end, she becomes insane and finally finds her freedom. “The Story of An Hour” is about, Mrs. Mallard, a woman who has just found out her husband has died. Mrs. Mallard

The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin and The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman written in the 1890s both reflect gender roles of this time, specifically women’s roles. In these stories both of the women are oppressed by their marriages, and by the end of the stories both wish to be rid of their husbands. Also, in both of these stories these women experience mental illnesses, mainly depression. These illnesses were looked at as something minor during this time, was it because psychologists were uneducated, or because as women their mental stability did not really matter? These stories connect so well because of their work to bring to the surface the reality of gender roles in the 1800s. Even though these stories were fictional their ideas were very real. By comparing how men and women were treated during this time, and how they are treated more equally now, it shows that with time American has come a long way.

     Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is as a wonderful example of the gothic horror genre. It was not until the rediscovery of the story in the early 1970’s that “The Yellow Wallpaper” was recognized as a feminist indictment of a male dominated society. The story contains many typical gothic trappings, but beneath the conventional façade hides a tale of repression and freedom told in intricate symbolism as seen through the eyes of a mad narrator.

The “rest cure” was a common treatment for depression in women in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Women were locked in a room involuntarily and forced to “rest.” The patient was locked in a room and not allowed to leave or function in any type of way. The narrator in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story The Yellow Wallpaper is subjected to this cure. The story is written to expose the cruelty of the “resting cure”. Gilman uses the wall paper to represent the narrators sense of entrapment, the notion of creativity gone astray, and a distraction that becomes an obsession.

Women in history stood best known for a less ascendant sex in the mid-nineteen centuries. Since times have gone by women had fought for their equal rights and freedom. There had been many stereotypes, where the women were considered as a slave to the men’s because the women’s position was to be the homemakers and a mother to their children, while the men’s are out socializing with others. If they were not happy with the marriage, they cannot just walk out or complain because a women role is to endure all these pains without a word coming out of their mouths. Two out of the ordinary short stories, “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “The Story of An Hour,” mostly focused on a women’s dilemma that they faced near the 19th century. The two main characters in the short stories show some resemblances in some ways, but both characters portrayed them in different ways of how they dealt their sorrows in their marriages.

Until the medical breakthroughs that we have made in the modern day, psychology as a science was not fully understood. Modern technology has given us a clearer idea of psychology, but in the past there was less known about the science. This alongside a predominantly male medical discourse led to a medical diagnosis in many women called hysteria. Female hysteria was a medical diagnosis given to specifically women as far back as the ancient Greek civilization. Hysteria started as a supernatural phenomena, but as medicine evolved it would be described as a mental disorder, (Tasca). Hysteria. in actuality, is an absurd and fabricated diagnosis that institutionalized and discriminated countless women. The way it makes a women feel, and the fact that it strips a woman of any sort of free will is a sickening display of blatant misogyny. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman perfectly displays not only the misogyny, but the torture a woman must face trapped under a hysteria diagnosis. Hysteria as a diagnoses fails to effectively treat many women, instead leading to the mistreatment and wrongful institutionalization of women.

Hysteria was the “go-to, catchall diagnosis” for all women, consisting of any “problem” including, but not limited to, nervousness, faintness, loss of appetite, (lack of) sexual desire, headaches, insomnia, muscle spasms, and trouble-making. For centuries, literature portrayed as submissive and obedient to men and oppressed by society, culture, and even men. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman presents readers with a story of a woman suffering from depression, possibly post-partum, but whose remedy is “rest cure,” a treatment invented by Silas Weir Mitchell for neurasthenia involving isolation and rest as a cure for hysteria in all its forms. The Yellow Wallpaper is a narrative concerning the gradual demise of the mental stability of an unnamed, newly married upper-middle class woman in late nineteenth century rural America. Gilman uses psychological terror to not only portray the narrator’s fall to insanity, but also to shed light on the rather unfortunate role of women in the institution of marriage. The narrator’s husband, John, is a physician who firmly expresses disbelief in his wife’s claims of depression. From the beginning of the story, the reader can tell immediately that the narrator has absolutely no voice. John assures her and others that nothing is wrong but “temporary nervous

Despite differing story lines, Charlotte Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, John Steinbeck’s The Chrysanthemums and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, depict the same suffering; the isolation that women have been forced to endure throughout history. In the time period that all three characters were placed, it was culturally acceptable for wives to be dominated by their husbands; their responsibility revolving around the needs of their children and those of their spouse. Most women simply did not have a means or an idea of how to rebel against their husbands. The women in all three stories are protagonists who have poor relationships of emotional attachment with their spouses. While the main character of Gilman’s story endures multiple psychotic

Most women in America nowadays are lucky enough to consider themselves to be an independent individual, but females were not always guaranteed their freedoms. Throughout the early 1900’s, authors would characterize husbands to be controlling figures. In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins demonstrates just how possessive the husband is to his wife in their marriage. This short story shows just how miserable the woman is to be in a marriage with John because John, thinks it would be best that his wife is isolated to get over her postpartum depression.“The Yellow Wallpaper” demonstrates how a male dominated society leads to the woman not being their own individual by using characterization, narrator perspective, and conflict between women and society.

Writings from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s often depict husbands as controlling. This would lead to the demise of their wives. In “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gillman the husband’s insistence upon control, leaves their wives longing for the freedom of simple expression. “The Story of an Hour” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” illustrates how the husband is the controlling figure in the marriage. The two short stories also expose how the oppression put on them by their husband leaves the women unfulfilled and unhappy with their lives.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," is the disheartening tale of a woman suffering from postpartum depression. Set during the late 1890s, the story shows the mental and emotional results of the typical "rest cure" prescribed during that era and the narrator’s reaction to this course of treatment. It would appear that Gilman was writing about her own anguish as she herself underwent such a treatment with Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell in 1887, just two years after the birth of her daughter Katherine. The rest cure that the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" describes is very close to what Gilman herself experienced; therefore, the story can be read as reflecting the feelings of women like herself who suffered through

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.

Neurasthenia is the nervous disease the narrator is suffering from. Gilman expresses if the narrator is ill or if the “rest cure” treatment she is on is making her crazy(Wilson). Weir Mitchell was the authors/narrators doctor who prescribed her the “rest cure” treatment, which did not succeed(Gilman). The narrator tells her husband to help her and change the treatment, but he refuses her desires. As a result, the narrator became insane because her husband forced his wife to be in an oppressed situation with her health(MacPike).

physician who has given her a ‘rest cure’: to resist all intellectual activity. This unnamed

"Mitchell's patients lost much of themselves as people" (53).  Gilman herself, after sinking into a deep depression, was sent to Mitchell in Philadelphia for his rest cure.  After a month of treatment Mitchell concluded that there was nothing wrong with her and sent her home with these instructions: "Live as domestic a life as possible.  Have your child with you at all times.  Lie down an hour after each meal.  Have but two hours of intellectual life a day.  And never touch pen, brush or pencil as long as you live." (Gilman, Autobiography 62).  Gilman followed these instructions for several months until she came extremely close to losing her mind.  Says Gilman of this time: "I made a rag baby, hung it on the doorknob and played with it.  I would crawl into remote closets and under beds to hide from the grinding pressure of that profound distress." (63).  It is exactly this situation that lead Charlotte Perkins Gilman to write her eerily accurate tale of one woman's forced regression into insanity.