Theme Of Gender Equality In The Yellow Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a first-person narration of madness experienced by an unnamed woman in the Victorian era. The madness is exposed through a “nervous condition” diagnosed by the writer’s husband, a physician, who believes the only cure is prohibiting all intellectual thought and to remain in solitude for a “rest-cure”. The act of confinement propels the narrator into an internal spiral of defiance against patriarchal discourse. Through characterization and symbolism, “The Yellow Wallpaper” exhibits an inventive parallel between the narrator’s mental deterioration and her internal struggle to break free from female oppression imposed on her through her husband and society.

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.

  The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman can by read in many different ways.  Some think of it as a tragic horror story while others may find it to be a tale of a woman trying to find her identity in a male-dominated society.  The story is based on an episode in Gilman's life when she suffered from a nervous disease called melancholia.  A male specialist advised her to "live a domestic a life as far as possible.. and never to touch a pen, brush or pencil..."   (Gilman, 669).   She lived by these guidelines for three months until she came close to suffering from a nervous breakdown.  Gilman then decided to continue writing, despite the physicians advice, and overcame her illness.

Gender roles seem to be as old as time and have undergone constant, but sometime subtle, revisions throughout generations. Gender roles can be defined as the expectations for the behaviors, duties and attitudes of male and female members of a society, by that society. The story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” is a great example of this. There are clear divisions between genders. The story takes place in the late nineteenth century where a rigid distinction between the domestic role of women and the active working role of men exists (“Sparknotes”). The protagonist and female antagonists of the story exemplify the women of their time; trapped in a submissive, controlled, and isolated domestic sphere, where they are treated

“The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892, is a great example of early works pertaining to feminism and the disease of insanity. Charlotte Gilman’s own struggles as a woman, mother, and wife shine through in this short story capturing the haunting realism of a mental breakdown.The main character, much like Gilman herself, slips into bouts of depression after the birth of her child and is prescribed a ‘rest cure’ to relieve the young woman of her suffering. Any use of the mind or source of stimulus is strictly prohibited, including the narrator’s favorite hobby of writing. The woman’s husband, a physician, installs into his wife that the rest treatment is correct and will only due harm if not followed through. This type of treatment ultimately drives the woman insane, causing her to envision a woman crawling behind the yellow wallpaper of her room. Powerlessness and repression the main character is subject to creates an even more poignant message through the narrator’s mental breakdown. The ever present theme of subordination of women in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is advanced throughout the story by the literary devices of symbolism, imagery, and allegory.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” a short story about a mentally ill women,written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman at age 32, in 1892 is a story with a hidden meaning and many truths. Charlotte Perkins Gilman coincidentally also had a mental illness and developed cancer leading her to kill herself in the sixties. The story begins with Jane, the mentally ill woman who feels a bit distressed, and although both of the well respected men in her life are physicians she is put simply on a “rest cure”. This rest cure as well as many symbols such as the Yellow Wallpaper, her journal, and her inevitable breakdown are prime examples of the typical life of a woman in this time period and their suppressed lives that they lived even with something as serious as a

It was commonly casted that women during the 19th century were not to go beyond their domestic spheres. If a woman were to go beyond the norms and partake in a “male” activity and not assign to “womanly” duties, it were to take an ill effect on her, because she was designed to act merely as a mother, wife, and homemaker. The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, demonstrates the status of women in the 19th century within society, revealing that madness in this story stems from the oppressive control of gender on woman. A woman who is trying to escape from confinement may result in madness. The use of madness characterizes women as victims of society, suffering the effects of isolation brought on by oppression driving

Mitchell was predisposed to think that women did not need to leave there bed or even their homes when they were ill. The rest cure also exacerbated normal gender roles of that era. Men were the ones who belonged in the outside world; they were the bread winners. Men needed to be outside of the home and to take care of the needs of everyone in it. In contrast, women were supposed to inside the home of take care of the home. Dr. Mitchell ensures men were not feeling emasculated by being subject to the same treatment as women and be subject to their homes where they felt only women were supposed to be. The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Gilman, highlight the mental distress that the rest cure tolls on your mental state. Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” because of her experience on the rest cure and she wanted to “save people from being driven crazy”. Another reason that Gilman could have written the short story is to show that women need intellectual stimulation as much as men and that living domestically and not doing things that express a person’s creative side could drive them insane.

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.

“In 1887, Perkins Gilman went to a specialist in hope of curing her ailment. She had some nervous breakdown (BASSUK). The specialist advised her “rest cure” treatment. It consists of lying on the bed all day and indulging oneself in any intellectual activity for two hours a day. After the three months treatment, Gillman said that she was close to marginal of utter psychological ruin. At the start of the first few decades, readers of “the yellow wallpaper” assumed it as a horror fiction story positioned in the Gothic category. Since 1960s, it has been considered as women’s movement demonstrating 19th era attitudes to women’s physical and spiritual health.” After the introduction, analysis of story is being done which is followed by analysis of one major character. At the end, symbolic point of view of the story is being told.

and "gates that lock". At the top of the stairs is a gate that keeps

Weir Mitchell during a severe bout of postpartum depression after the birth of her first and only child. Gilman found the supposed cure outrageous and rightfully so, this is when she decided to write The Yellow Wallpaper as a semi-autobiography. The story was published in The New England Magazine in 1892. Charlotte Gilman’s defiant writing is still considered an extremely important contribution to feminist literature and her story broke new ground in the rebellion against Dr. Mitchell's rest-cure treatment. In the words of Elizabeth Ammons, a writer for the Oxford University press, Mitchell devised his cure to be a “’violent process of feminization, the turning of a woman into a helpless, docile, overgrown infant’ emphasizing the infantilized, passive role expected of women at that time.” Women living in the 19th century were expected to maintain the home as a faultless, happy haven for their husbands to return to each evening. Even during times where the North and South were harshly divided, almost all people in the United States agreed to this same idea of “perfect femininity”. Women were supposed to be loving mothers, wives, and daughters, and they were only considered happy and healthy when they adhered to the cheerful, quiet personalities they were expected to exhibit. Thus, when a woman showed even the slightest bit of nerves, rebellion, or negative emotion, she was perceived as wrong and an unhealthy

The short story was a very strong testimonial that had people wondering about women’s right in the 20th century and how hard it was for women to stand for themselves or to have a say in things. In Gilman’s story, it shows a strong feeling about feminism and women not having a right to stand up for themselves. Judith A. Allen claims in her article that, “Gilman has once again become an important source of inspiration and ideas, in particular for more of her fictional work has been made available. Her short story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ has become a feminist classic and remains the subject of much discussion.” As more people being to read the story they had more understanding of what a woman with mental illness is going through in the 20th century.

     In the late nineteenth century, after the American social and economic shift commonly referred to as the "Industrial Revolution" had changed the very fabric of American society, increased attention was paid to the psychological disorders that apparently had steamed up out of the new smokestacks and skyscrapers in urban populations (Bauer, 131).  These disorders were presumed to have been born out of the exhaustion and "wear and tear" of industrial society (Bauer, 131-132).  An obvious effect of these new disorders was a slew of physicians and psychiatrists advocating one sort of cure or another, although the "rest cure" popularized by the physician S. Weir Mitchell was the most

The yellow wallpaper is a story about John and his wife who he keeps locked up due to her "nervous condition" of anxiety. John diagnoses her as sick and has his own remedy to cure her. His remedy s to keep her inside and deterring her from almost all activities. She is not allowed to write, make decisions on her own, or interact with the outside world. John claims that her condition is improving but she knows that it is not. She eats almost nothing all day and when it is suppertime she eats a normal meal. John sees this and proclaims her appetite is improving. Later in the story, the woman creates something of an imaginary friend trapped behind the horrible looking yellow wallpaper in