Women's Language Of The Powerless Summary

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"

Every request the woman in the story has made to her husband has been dismissed and her depression continues to worsen because she has lost control of her own life. John fails to understand how it feels for his wife to be trapped in her room all day. “He forces his wife into a daily confinement by four walls whose paper, described as ‘debased Romanesque,’ is an omnipresent figuring of the

Introduction: John’s domination over the Narrator is evident from the beginning of the short story. The Narrator remains unknown and takes the identity of John’s wife not an individual human being. This identity, further explored, becomes her personality because she obeys John’s every command.

The yellow wallpaper represents society. The gates you see her in front of the background image symbolize freedom. The lights illuminating right through the window represents the power of men. The woman behind the gates seeks escape the control of men. Also, as it becomes more complex, she begins to see women behind it which shows the problem is worse and she become more mentally unstable. “Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over ( Gilman 9).” women trailing behind the picture shows it feels confined to the walls of the room. The narrator breaks yellow wallpaper not willing to accept how bad is her mental state. ' 'I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad. So I will let it alone and talk about the house ' '( Gilman ). This statement reveals the wishes of the narrator want to think independently. Here we can see how women of 19th century thought. women prefer not to think about their condition rather than fight his place in society.

An Examination On Sociocultural “Marking” of Women – Rhetorical Analysis of “There Is No Unmarked Woman” by Deborah Tanen

First of all, when the narrator is in her room, she sees the woman behind the wallpaper creeping her during the daytime. This shows that she is unreliable because of her mental health problem. This is one the most important part of the story because the woman that she sees represents herself being trapped in the room. Also, her feelings are not stable. In the beginning, she sees John as a person who takes care of her and loves her. However, the later in the story, the narrator seems to

        The words stabbed at John’s heart and flooded him with a mixture of regret and guilt.  His muddled mind served up flashes of his disagreement with Mary, of his refusal of his mom’s request and of the related emotional suffering he and his siblings had

As Mary Boyne lead readers through the world of “Afterward”, readers “heard but one clear note, the voice of Alida Stair, speaking on the lawn at Pangbourne” (Wharton 140). Her iconic words that played a pivotal role in the narrative began and ended the story. They revealed the story. The impact her words possess, however, escalates knowing they came from the mouth of a woman. Unlike the girl on the bench, Alida Stair could’ve been male. Wharton intended readers to remember the words of a woman to prove they can hold as great of significance as words that came from a man. Showing that a woman held the answer is like declaring that women are the answer that society have long sought for.

In addition to the mental restraints the speaker has, there are societal confinements as well. “…after the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on (Gilman, page 2).” These physical restraints, like the barred windows, and the gate, are the societal confinements the narrator feels in the patriarchal society she lives in. John is keeping her away from civilization and

The narrator’s feelings of inferiority and powerlessness parallels the female figure she sees trapped behind the pattern in the wall-paper adorning her room. She gradually withdraws from both John and reality by locking herself in the room and ultimately merging with the figure. Through the changing image of the pattern from a “fait figure” (Gilman 46) to a “woman stooping” (Gilman 46) behind the paper and “shaking the bars” (Gilman 46) as if she wanted “to get out” (Gilman 46), we can see her becoming one with the figure: “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.”(51) Her collapse into madness as reflected in her behavior with the “bedstead [that] is fairly gnawed” (Gilman 51) and her “creeping all around” (Gilman 50) is a direct result of her passive submissiveness to John’s control of her life.

I watched a Ted Talk documentary named Silent No More – Using Your Voice to End Violence Against Women by Andrea Menard. The video focused on violence against women and how women should not silent or blame themselves. I learned that one in three women will experience violence in their life. The type of violence will vary from sexual or physical abuse. The most common forms of abuse are sexual assault, sex trafficking, molestation, domestic violence, stalking, date rape, sexual harassment and murder.

Language ultimately defines humanity. The method of what and how we communicate in writing or speech can have profound impacts on the receiver. At its best, language is not only limited to communicating our deepest emotions but to also convey abstract concepts. Nonetheless, the use of language can contain deeper implications and may often be intentionally or unintentionally ambiguous. Words with positive connotations may conjure up feelings associated with joy, inspiration or even empowerment. On the other hand, words that convey a negative meaning may instill images of pain, sorrow or injustice. George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion is an ultimate portrayal of the significance of language in society. More specifically, Shaw aims to critique his concurrent society’s exploitation of women and the working class via his renowned play. However, the irony lies in that though Shaw’s play seem to criticize gender and class inequality, the ambiguity by which he paints his characters may be misunderstood by untrained eyes as an reinforcement of society’s objectification of women and the working class.

Readers who have been oppressed by a man may relate to the narrator and argue that it was John who led her to insanity, and had he not belittled her she wouldn’t have gotten to the point at the end of the story where she was “creeping” around the room. Others who adhere more to the customs and rules at the time, may argue that John wasn’t doing anything wrong as he was only giving his wife the treatment that many at the time thought was appropriate. Gilman uses a first person narrative format for the story which allows readers to experience the narrator’s feelings and battle with her depression first hand. The story is broken up into twelve different sections to signify the progression of the narrator’s insanity as time goes on. Much of the story is filled with short and simple sentences that contain the narrator’s thoughts.

Additionally, the ineffectiveness of Perdita’s rhetoric furthers Shakespeare’s claim that language does not empower women in the lower-class shepherd’s court. For example, during Perdita and Polixenes’ discussion of flowers, Perdita’s language is unable to persuade Polixenes to agree with her opinions. Perdita states that she “[cares] not/ To get slips of” carnations and gillyvors because they are “nature’s bastards” and are not natural. She continues by asserting that “There is an art which in their piedness shares/ With great creating nature,” explaining her belief that because the flowers are made through crossbreeding, they are unnatural and therefore their beauty is artificial since it is owed equally to nature and the gardener that bred them (IV.4.82-89). However, Polixenes is unconvinced by this claim and instead states that although “nature is made better by no mean,” all means of attempting to improve nature must themselves be natural. Therefore, Polixenes believes, the apparently artificial quality of crossbred flowers “is an art/ That nature makes” and thus “art itself is nature” (IV.4.89-97). Perdita has no response to Polixenes’ view and yields to his argument. This conversation demonstrates that Perdita’s rhetoric in the court of the shepherd is largely unsuccessful and does not empower her or further her opinions in the same manner as the language of Paulina and Hermione does. Overall, Shakespeare conveys his claim that Perdita’s power and influence in the

The theme of feminine incompetence plays a role in the leading up to the final enclosement, and the concluding setting of the play. In the diary of the narrator, she writes of her large home as “A colonial mansion, a hereditary estate. I would say a haunted house.”(1684). The narrator’s husband John, a physician, believes that the narrator is not able to connect with society, and does not believe the narrator when she exclaims that she is sick. The ownership of the narrator is depicted heavily when she states “I lie here on this great immovable bed - it is nailed down.”(1688). The immovable, nailed down bed is symbolic for the ownership of this woman, as the bed is merely an appliance, and kept in one place, just as the narrator, for the entirety of its use. The narrator’s situation is also noted in other places in her room. The narrator states after she finds a woman in the wall paper in her room that “The faint figure behind seemed… just as if she wanted to get out.”(1689). This is symbolic for the woman’s own destiny. Just as the narrator is, the woman in the wallpaper is a possession, and is trapped in something that she cannot get out of. This connection to the woman is a blatant symbol for the enclosement of the narrator, and the notion that the narrator’s own husband does not trust her to live up with normal society. John, the husband, is also seen treating the narrator as a small child; “John