Women Being Controlled in The Yellow Wallpaper

John has placed his wife in a prison. The disturbing stained and yellowed wallpaper is used, faded and repulsive. The color is one that is unwelcoming, uncomfortable, and uneasy; its color mirrors the narrator's relationship with her husband, and ultimately, with herself. The narrator is uncomfortable and anxious in the barred sulfur colored room where she is fussed over by her husband. John preens his wife, his possession, making the narrator draw further and further away from him. She realizes that her husband lacks the understanding that she craves. This is emphasized as John refuses to accept his wife's condition; "John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him" (248). As the narrator begins to recognize herself as her husband's caged belonging, she becomes more attached to the symbol of the wallpaper. Instead of attempting to understand, John reduces his wife to the status of a child. He repeatedly refers to her as his "blessed little goose"

Due to their behavior, both men lead their wives to rebel. John’s controlling behavior causes the narrator to abandon him by going completely mad. First, she questions John’s pronouncements. The narrator believes that congenial work, with excitement and change would do her good (p.297). Next, she focuses on the wallpaper. She describes its negative features noting that patches are gone as if school boys wore it out (p.298). Upset by her husband’s actions, the narrator decides to begin writing in secret. . It reaches the point where the narrator has to hide her writings from him, because he gets upset if she even writes a word (p.298). -After time passes, we see her obsession grow. John seems to be oblivious to the narrator’s conditions, telling her “you know the place is doing you good” (p.299). She notices that the pattern is torturing (p.303). Finally, she begins to see a woman hiding behind the pattern (p.304). Looking for the woman in the pattern gives her something to look forward to (p.305). Ultimately she comes to believe that she is the woman in the wallpaper and wants to free herself. She begins peeling off the paper through the night, and by morning removes all the paper she could while standing (p.307). The narrator even begins to contemplate jumping out of the window, but does not

John, the narrator’s controlling, but loving, husband represents the atypical man of the time. He wants his wife to get better and to be able to fill the role of the perfect wife that society expected from her. John, being a doctor, did not quite believe that her mental illness was out of her control and insisted on

John is characterized by Gillman as being very analytical, very scientific in thought. As such, so when he fails to find anything physically wrong with his wife he attributes it to fatigue, almost refusing to entertain the idea that it might be an emotional unsoundness that afflicts her. There also appears to be an immense lack of communication between the narrator and her husband John. "I had no intention of telling him it was because of the wallpaper", says the narrator, referring to her husband, "he would make fun of me. He might even want to take me away"(Gillman 583). This paucity of interchange and inability of John to truly listen to his wife's needs are the ultimate sources of conflict in the story.

The pain medication that her husband has her on appears to be causing her to feel groggy and unable to express herself even through her journal entries. This is seen when the narrator states that she thinks “sometimes that if [she] were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and [bring her comfort]. But [she] finds [she] gets pretty tired when [she tries]” (Gilman,79). She goes on to states that she finds “it is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about [her] work” (Gilman, 79). John is causing the narrator more harm than good, and one can see that more clearly because when a person lacks the strength to do something that they love that means that there is something really wrong with that person. In addition, John is treating his wife like someone that is less than him, which leads one to state that he is driving his wife crazy. As a result, the cure that John has put her on, causes her to begin to have delusions. The narrator begins to imagine that there is a woman trapped in the wallpaper. By showing that the narrator is going insane, Gilman helps show the severity of the narrator’s health and the lack of control that she has over her own well-being. The narrator asks her husband if they could leave the home that they are renting one last time because she feels like she is losing her mind, and John responds by saying that she is not in any real danger and that she should not let false ideas into her head (Gilman,83). John then begs her to stop letting “false and foolish [ideas]” (Gilman, 83) like that into her head for his sake, the sake of their child, and her sake. (Gilman, 83) Then the narrator stops talking and lets her husband go to sleep. This shows that once again the narrator is trying to take control of her own situation but she unable to gain control because her

When John was outside from home, some sadness invade her and crying arrives for nothing. In a conversation with John, she manifests her non conformity with the room, what he replied that she is improving her health here. Besides that, John suggests that there are not any serious things to worry now, until three weeks, when they travel out for a few days for remodeling . "Better in body perhaps-" she said back. Eventually, her life now begins to have a meaning and purpose. Most of her attention through the rest of the day and particularly at nights is focused on the discovery of the scene behind of the yellow wallpaper in the corner of her room. Occasionally, she saw one or more women creeping along not only at night in the yellow wallpaper, but also during the day around the house. At the last night before the trip, a large amount of that yellow paper was ripped when she was trying to help her to get out of that pattern. She finds a connection between she at the women in the paper. John's sister tries to take her out of the room, but in a refusal to leave the room, she locked herself in the room and thrower the key under a plantain leaf. John arrives

The woman's husband, John, uses his knowledge and power to overpower the main character. He uses this power and control mentally, which drove the woman crazy. Perhaps subconsciously, the man uses his power to convince the women that he knows exactly what she needs.

They generally did not have jobs outside of the homes and were to remain in the shadows of their husbands. Throughout the story, the narrator constantly reminds the reader that she is to be subservient to John and has no right arguing against his decisions. For instance, she states that “John laughs at [her], of course, but one expects that in marriage” (Gilman 647). Also, she makes it very clear that she does not think her problem, if she truly has one, should be diagnosed as “temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency” and she “believes that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do her good” (Gilman 648). However, since her husband and brother are physicians and that is their diagnosis, she is forced to accept it and follow any treatment she is prescribed. As a result, she is forced to do the exact opposite of what she thinks is best for her: remain isolated and simply do nothing in her bedroom. Even in her private journal, she feels guilty about too many negative thoughts, “so [she] will leave it alone and talk about the house,” just as a woman during the late 1800s was expected to do (Gilman

All her inner desire is rejected. Anything she wants to do, must be approved by John and he makes the decision that she has to follow. All in all, the woman’s action is controlled by her

One of the main ideas in The Yellow Wallpaper that connects to feminist criticism is that women who suffer from hysterical, irrational behaviour are subject to punishment from their husbands or from society. Feminist theorists believe that women showing peculiar behaviour due to emotional reactions are dealt much differently than a male exhibiting the same type of behaviour. This goes to show that males are the dominant gender in a patriarchal society due to their overpowering control and women’s submissiveness. In the theory article, it clearly states that “she suffers self-recrimination for her inadequacy or “unnaturalness”. At worst she suffers physical punishment from the community or her husband”, which reveal the strict gender hierarchy standings in a patriarchal society.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper” originally published in 1892, the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes of the struggles that women faced during that period in time. Women typically had the role of a housewife and mother during the 1800s, and were not viewed or recognized as equal to men. While this was the typical way of how men kept control of and treated women during the time of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, inside Jane’s head, she was an emotional and physical prisoner of her husband John. John would not allow Jane write down thoughts or ideas, nor would he allow her to leave the bedroom because she was “sick”. In John’s eyes, he would lose control of his wife if he allowed her to get better to which ironically, he lost control, as she escaped her mental prison.

The story is narrated by the wife of the of John, and represented as weak and foolish. John her husband is a doctor. He doesn't and of her suggestions or concerns about her illness in general. She contrasted his practical, rational manner to her more frivolous and sensitive ways. She was not allowed to voice what she truly felt and this was evident when she said, “There comes John, and I must put this away-he hates to have me write a word” (Gilman, 1892/2013, p. 487 ). Throughout the story her subservience to her husband was felt. The image of the woman she sees behind the yellow wallpaper represents image of herself, locked up within the walls of her room and societal norms. Recognizing her oppression, she also determined that she must take steps to change her position. She began standing up for herself when she showed disobedience to her husband and ignored his request to open the door. Finding the voice to tell him to get the key in the front to open the door shows how, for the first time, she was in control and she took pleasure in it. Then she is really set free when her husband walks in a dies and she crawls over him. That really displayed she was going against societal norms and was breaking new ground for women of that time period. Expressing her actual thoughts through writing helped her discover that she could be so much more than what

"The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, tells the story of a woman's descent into madness as a result of the "rest and ignore the problem cure" that is frequently prescribed to cure hysteria and nervous conditions in women.  More importantly, the story is about control and attacks the role of women in society.  The narrator of the story is symbolic for all women in the late 1800s, a prisoner of a confining society.  Women are expected to bear children, keep house and do only as they are told.  Since men are privileged enough to have education, they hold jobs and make all the decisions.  Thus, women are cast into the prison of

She focuses on the paper and starts to feel as if someone in the house is watching her. She immediately wants to leave the mansion, but I was confused as to why John was forcing her to stay. I feel her interaction with the wall for the first time may have been a sign that she was always going to be watched in the house. Also, I interpreted that since John made his wife so vulnerable, it was easier for the wallpaper to possess her. The narrator tries to show her creativity through writing, but I did not understand why John does not like her doing that.

She is trapped and subject to her spouse’s happiness and the author feels such a relationship is