Charlotte Perkins Gilman in, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” tells the story of a woman suffering from postpartum depression and her solitary inactive treatment in a yellow wallpapered room. Gilman herself experienced postpartum depression in her life and experienced the even more depressing treatment with it. She lived during the late nineteenth century where women were mostly confined around the, “domestic circle,” and could not participate in technical or intellectual activities outside the household
Throughout The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman has written a surprisingly horrific story that includes themes of suppression of women, exclusive confinement of women at home and the negligence of mentally ill patients (especially women). She expressed and conveyed multiple messages across the story on men’s oppressive forces towards women (especially women under marriage in vulnerable mental states). After writing the story of The Yellow Wallpaper, she was known for writing the story in an indirect way
Women of this era of “The Yellow Wallpaper” story had a father or husband as their guardian because they couldn’t live on their own. Gilman purpose when writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” was to describe a depression treatment that the narrator was going through in her life. The wallpaper is the main symbol of the story because she sees a reflection of her life in the wallpaper. Gilman believed in women’s rights and believed that women must exercise their intellect or they would go mad. Most of Gilman’s
In Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator compares herself to the wallpaper to represent the hardships of her life. The narrator uses the wallpaper as her imagination to escape from her imprisonment. Due to society, the narrator uses the yellow wallpaper to compare her institution of marriage. The ideals of women were positioned as housewives, reproduce kids, and please their husbands. On the other hand, men’s position is to be dominant of the relationship. Due to society, the narrator
Ever since the dawn of humanity, women have always been viewed as inferior and dependent on men for survival. Even as recently as the late nineteenth century, women had less freedom than women in modern-day society, and they were expected to live with and depend on their husband or father. Taking place in the late nineteenth century, “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman reveals the treatment of women in a patriarchal society, and exposes the perception of mental illness within
In her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman expresses the themes of the subordination on women in marriage, the importance of self-expression along with the evils of the “resting cure”. The protagonist, known as the narrator or as Jane, is struggling with postpartum depression, after the birth of her daughter. Her husband John, who was a doctor, prescribed the narrator the rest cure. So, to better assist the narrator with the rest cure, her husband takes her to a summer home
The Oppression of Women as Shown in“The Yellow Wallpaper” 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
Women and Fiction in The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a deceptively simple story. It is easy to follow the thirteen pages of narrative and conclude the protagonist as insane. This is a fair judgement, after all no healthy minded individual becomes so caught up with "hideous" and "infuriating" wallpaper to lose sleep over it, much less lock herself in a room to tear the wallpaper down. To be able to imagine such things as "broken necks" and "bulbous
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
“The Yellow Wallpaper” has many examples of the role women played during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. In this short story the narrator is trapped in the role of the average housewife in this time period. She keeps the house clean, and her husband happy, and seldom leaves the house on leisure. The narrator in this short story is similar to the average woman in this time period because she is in charge of cleaning, cooking, looking after the children, and not much else. She herself admires the