Throughout history women were forced into the roles of a housewife, nanny, etc. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman displays what it was like for women before they were as equal as men. The main character in this story begins to lose her mind as her husband and people around her trap her in her mind. The author utilizes symbolism to express the main character’s true feelings about herself and her role as a women. The first symbolism the author uses is the narrator's and the husband’s relationship. She loves and relies on her husband so much she would listen to what he has to say. For instance, the story states “I wish John would take me away from here!”(Gilman 5). This quotes shows how the narrator trust him to save her. Not only does she love John, but John loves her so they have a strong bond. “He said I was his darling and comfort and all he had.” (Gilman 5). Their relationship is solid which makes it hard for her to go …show more content…
She wants to move the bed but because the bed is bolted down it won’t move symbolising no matter what she does she can’t move forward in life. “This bed will NOT move! I tried to lift it and push until I was lame” (Gilman 9). At the end of the story she ends her life in the room. “I’ve got a rope here that Jennie did not find...Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had creep over him every time!” (Gilman 10). The author uses all sorts of symbolism to open the reader’s eyes on the abuse that women get. She ends her life to show she could never leave her life style due to suppression her husband and society put on her. Gilman uses their relationship to show how manipulative society can be. Last of all, the main character sees a very sad women stuck on the yellow wallpaper showing she can't get out no matter what. The author used these symbols to show what can happen when we suppress women to one
Throughout the nineteenth century, women were considered as the woman of the house. With this title, women were expected to take care of the children, clean the house, and complete chores around the house. Women were not allowed to have jobs and do what they wanted to. Most writers during this time period were men. One of the most famous female authors during the nineteenth century was Charlotte Gilman. Her most famous and controversial short story was “The Yellow Wall-paper”. Charlotte Gilman wrote this short story to change the view on the roles of women in the nineteenth century by using the wallpaper as the oppression of society and the narrator as women mentally breaking away from their roles during this time period.
It is clear that in their marriage, her husband makes her decisions on her behalf and she is expected to simply follow blindly. Their relationship parallels the roles that men and women play in marriage when the story was written. The narrator’s feelings of powerlessness and submissive attitudes toward her husband are revealing of the negative effects of gender roles. John’s decision to treat the narrator with rest cure leads to the narrator experiencing an intense feeling of isolation, and this isolation caused her mental decline. Her descent into madness is at its peak when she grows tears the wallpaper and is convinced that “[she’s] got out at last, in spite of [John] and Jennie… and [they] can’t put her back!”
At the time Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” she was considered a prominent feminist writer. This piece of background information allows the readers to see Gilman’s views on women’s rights and roles in the 18th century; “The Yellow Wallpaper” suggests that women in the 18th century were suppressed into society’s marital gender roles. Gilman uses the setting and figurative language, such as symbolism, imagery, and metaphors to convey the theme across.
In the 19th century, women were not seen in society as being an equal to men. Men were responsible for providing and taking care of the family while their wives stayed at home not allowed leaving without their husbands. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes about a woman named Jane who is trapped by society’s cage and tries to find herself. Throughout the story, the theme of self-discovery is developed through the symbols of the nursery, the journal and the wallpaper.
In society, there has always been a gap between men and women. Women are generally expected to be homebodies, and seen as inferior to their husbands. The man is always correct, as he is more educated, and a woman must respect the man as they provide for the woman’s life. During the Victorian Era, women were very accommodating to fit the “house wife” stereotype. Women were to be a representation of love, purity and family; abandoning this stereotype would be seen as churlish living and a depredation of family status. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" and Henry Isben’s play A Doll's House depict women in the Victorian Era who were very much menial to their husbands. Nora Helmer, the protagonist in A Doll’s House and the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” both prove that living in complete inferiority to others is unhealthy as one must live for them self. However, attempts to obtain such desired freedom during the Victorian Era only end in complications.
The themes of the story are inferiority of women in marriage, expressing yourself, and the effects of treatment and they are universal. The main theme is the importance of expressing yourself, because if you don’t express yourself, you will lose yourself and then you won’t be who you truly are. An important symbol is the yellow wallpaper, which is in the room the narrator spends all her time in and is forced to stay in. She has nothing to do but stare at the intriguing wallpaper that has a woman trapped behind a pattern like she is trapped in her room. She also refers to the wallpaper as paper; therefore she reads the wallpaper like a text decoding the images like words.
This ‘insane’ act serves only to show how lost the narrator’s mind is. The narrator also reveals that she has a rope that she will use “if that woman does get out, and tries to get away, I can tie her” (236). The woman is a symbol of the narrator’s pre-nervous disorder personality. She essentially uses the statement to say that if the woman she once was escaping, she will hang herself. Finally, the story reaches its climax, in which John and the narrator have a final standoff in the now wall paperless bedroom (237).
The story "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story about control. In the time frame in which the story was written, the 1800’s, women were looked upon as having no effect on society other than bearing children, maintaining a clean house, and food on the table etc. etc. There was really no means for self expression as a woman, when men not only dominated society but the world. The story was written at a time when men held the jobs, knowledge, and society above their shoulders. The narrator on, "The Yellow Wallpaper" in being oppressed by her husband, John, even though many readers believe this story is about a woman who loses her mind, it is actually about a woman’s struggle to regain, something which she never had before, control of her life.
In the 19th century society was from different from what it is today. Women were not in the workforce, could not vote, or even have a say in anything. Women were not permitted to give evidence in court, nor, did they have the right to speak in public before an audience. When a woman married, her husband legally owned all she had (including her earnings, her clothes and jewelry, and her children). If he died, she was entitled to only a third of her husband’s estate. Charlotte Perkins Gilman wanted to change this. She wanted people to understand the plight of women in the 19th century. In her short story The Yellow Wallpaper she tries to convey this to the reader not just on a literal level, but through various symbols in the story. In The Yellow Wallpaper the author uses symbols to show restrictions on women, lack of public interaction, the struggle for equality, and the possibilities of the female sex during the 1800s.
...demonstrates the oppression that women had to face in society during the nineteenth century. The nursery room, the yellow wallpaper, and the windows, all symbolize in some way the oppression of women done by men. She bases the story on one of her life experiences. Charlotte Gilman wrote the story because she believed that men and women should be treated equally.
Throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells her readers the story of a woman desperate to be free. Gilman’s use of symbolism is nothing short of brilliant in telling the story of a new mother suffering from postpartum depression and fighting her way through societies ideas of what a woman should be. When her husband, John, also known as her physician, tells her nothing is wrong with her mind, at first she believes him because she knows that society tells her she should. However, with her husband’s misdiagnosis, or attempt to keep his wife sane for the sake of their reputation, comes a short journey into madness for his wife, Jane. Jane’s downward spiral, as one may call it, turns out to be not so downward when the reader
"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 acquiescence because they live in a world dominated by men. Since men suppress women, John, the narrator's husband, is presumed to have control over the protagonist. Gilman, however, suggests otherwise. She implies that it is a combination of society's control as well as the woman's personal weakness that contribute to the suppression of women. These two factors result in the woman's inability to make her own decisions and voice opposition to men.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman presents the behavior of society of the time. The protagonist is suppressed by her husband, John, and her brother, though they both mean well. The way she is treated by her husband and her brother is not outwardly “mean” because they never deal with her in anger, but the way that they suppress her by not letting her express her feelings or do what she wants, is still abuse. Even though, the way that they are treating her is wrong, it does not seem wrong because they both act gentle and kind towards her and make her think that they really do care about her. Throughout the story, the protagonist states her intentions to herself, but then does not act upon them because of her husband. This is further shown when she speaks of her husband and her brother, who "is also of higher standing," (Gilman 317) showing the high ranking of men in society. They keep her from doing the things she wants because they believe it is best for her to rest. She disagrees. "Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good" (Gilman 317). On p...
Traditionally, men have held the power in society. Women have been treated as a second class of citizens with neither the legal rights nor the respect of their male counterparts. Culture has contributed to these gender roles by conditioning women to accept their subordinate status while encouraging young men to lead and control. Feminist criticism contends that literature either supports society’s patriarchal structure or provides social criticism in order to change this hierarchy. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts one women’s struggle against the traditional female role into which society attempts to force her and the societal reaction to this act.
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 as fragile and unstable children while the men dominate the public working sphere.