Yellow Wallpaper Motherhood

“It’s a dirty business, you’re right. That’s why we women shouldn’t get involved” (Alvarez 44). In this quote Patria is trying to explain to Minerva that she shouldn’t get caught up in worrying about all of the government politics that are currently occurring about women. Minerva ends up arguing back explaining why she wants to “fight” back. She wants there to be equality or women of the future. Specifically she says, "women had to come out of the dark ages". Minerva wants women to be able to do what they would like to do, when and how they would like to without having to consult with their husband or a male. She wants them to have freedom and be able to do reasonable things on their own.

Many people describe the role as a mother and a wife as something that is to be welcomed, a natural stage for women. However for the narrator, it changed from something seemingly beautiful to “old foul, bad...” Motherhood to her is then what creative women were to other people during the 19th century. Creativity was natural for the narrator, unlike motherhood; it was part of her being. Motherhood however, was a prison of domestic

Love me or hate me no matter what you may think of me I stand for millions that can't stand for themselves. I am from somewhere you can't imagine and I was brought up in conditions where many would not survive. What your see in front of you is a strong, intelligent, Mexican American also known a Chicano/Chicana. I am seen less than what I really am, and viewed as an immigrant our even in some people's eyes labeled as an outsider. You people label me as Hispanic but I am not, I am a proud Mexican-American “Chicano.” The Chicano Culture base comes from Mexico, slang name also known to be Mexicano. It was used in ancient times to spot each member from the Aztec Indian Tribe. Anyone who was born in Mexico was seen as a Mexicano. Although most people don't know the difference an Chicano isn't a Mexican, he/she is a Mexican-American that was born and current lives in the United States since the early 20th century.

While the narrator recognizes the great care with which her husband is treating her she seems to constantly feel that she is being ungrateful. She calls herself out in her journal for being a “comparative burden” (Gilman) The room in which the narrator resides has a sturdy bed that is nailed to the floor. The narrator notes that there are bars on the windows and rings hooked into the wall. She wrongly assumes that this room was used as a nursery or gymnasium by the previous owners. As the reader, we are able to instill our own thoughts that this room was in fact built to house someone with a mental disorder. This begs the question of what the house really is, to contain such a room away from decent society.

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.

While, the narrator refers to the room as a nursery, the circumstances suggest that the room was really used to “treat” women like the narrator from similar illnesses. The room has a bolted down bed that “is fairly gnawed” (Gilman 517), which the narrator bites a piece off of in frustration, suggesting it was under similar circumstances that the bed came to be gnawed. Therefore, the narrator’s creeping inside the room is the only way for her to be part of society, as in the room she can “creep smoothly on the floor, and [her] shoulder fits... so [she] cannot lose [her] way” (Gilman 518). She has to suppress and hide her true self in front of others, even her husband, as many women had to during those times.

As man developed more complex social systems, society placed more emphasis of childbearing. Over time, motherhood was raised to the status of “saintly”. This was certainly true in western cultures during the late 19th/early 20th century.  Charlotte Perkins Gilman did not agree with the image of motherhood that society proposed to its members at the time. “Arguably ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ reveals women’s frustration in a culture that seemingly glorifies motherhood while it actually relegates women to nursery-prisons” (Bauer 65).  Among the many other social commentaries contained within this story, is the symbolic use of the nursery as a prison for the main character.

The ending and also the climax of the story, to be precise, it 's when her husband comes in and she 's creeping round and round the wall. She says “I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. I’ve got out at last, said I, in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the wallpaper, so you can’t put me back!”(251) As your reading this you can just tell that by making her trapped in the room with nothing to do was just making her worse. Like she says when she is pulling down the wallpaper so that they cannot put

In the 19th century the idea of “True Woman” came busting out onto the scene. “True Woman” was the idea of a perfect woman. A “True Woman” was obedient, quiet in her opinions, selfless, and a good homemaker. “The Cult of Domesticity”; as it is called today, made women feel inferior to their male counterparts because women were not the breadwinners of the family. In The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories, Charlotte Perkins Gilman subverts the ideas and values of “True Woman”.

    In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," the reader is treated to an intimate portrait of developing insanity. At the same time, the story's first person narrator provides insight into the social attitudes of the story's late Victorian time period. The story sets up a sense of gradually increasing distrust between the narrator and her husband, John, a doctor, which suggests that gender roles were strictly defined; however, as the story is just one representation of the time period, the examination of other sources is necessary to better understand the nature of American attitudes in the late 1800s. Specifically, this essay will analyze the representation of

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.

Interestingly enough, as the materials become more and more sturdy from wood to clay to stone, the darker and more hidden these intimate thoughts the narrator’s wife could be hiding from her husband. This intimate thought she is hiding is in fact a someone, and the moment she “steps inside” and shuts the “door,” it further signals to our narrator how his wife is truly attempting to cover up any possible stains or hints that will allow her husband to find out about her hidden secret. And when the time comes for our narrator to confront his wife’s shelter, he witnesses “tinkering at the window,” determining whether or his wife would open the “latches” as a reveal or seal the “cracks” to further mask the truth. As soon as our narrator begins to crack the pieces of the puzzle and grasps the knowledge that his wife is hiding something of significant importance, he is shown stuck dumbfounded in place as the movements at the window displays either the opening and reveal of her most intimate thoughts or further sealing of them away from

Unlike the narrator in the story, who eventually frees from behind the wallpaper " I’ve got out at last…And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!”(Gilman 1899 p.9) Gilman did not live to see her life’s work complete. As only small advances in Woman’s Rights were made before her passing in 1935. Gilman’s freedom from confinement is not into insanity when she finally rips down the paper, but goes through a crisis

The narrator describes the entire mansion from the hedges to the gates, to the garden as “the most beautiful place ever”. All of it is beautiful except for the bedroom in which she is kept in, but again the room selection was not her choice. “I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! But John would not hear of it.” The room had previously been a child’s nursery, and had bars on the window. Though she recently had a child, her newborn did not occupy this nursery. The baby was looked after by Johns’ sister, something he had also arranged, and the narrator had very little contact with her child. As the story progresses, the narrator begins to fill more and more trapped by the room and completely obsessed with the “repellent, almost revolting” yellow wallpaper that surrounds her. In many of her secret

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