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Women's role in the yellow wallpaper
Women's role in the yellow wallpaper
Women in the era of the yellow wallpaper
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born in Hartford Connecticut. She was a celebrated essayist and public speaker, she became an important early figure in American feminism. Although Gilman’s father frequently left the family for long periods during her childhood and ultimately divorced his wife, he directed Gilman’s early education, emphasizing study in science and history (4). She studied commercial art at Rhode Island School of Design where she met her husband, an artist named Walter Stetson. After the birth of her daughter, Katherine, she experienced a severe depression. They later divorced and she then married her cousin, George Houghton Gilman, he died around the time rest cure her doctor prescribed became the basis of her most famous story, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Gilman discovered she had inoperable breast cancer. After finishing her autobiography, she killed herself with chloroform in Pasadena, California. A review of the articles shows that the first one, Feminist Criticism ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, and the Politics of Color in America” praises contemporary feminism and its role in changing the study and the interpretation of literature. Lanser explains that in the time that feminism was rising, academic woman had discovered that “literature is greatly political and compassed by patriarchy ideology.” Lanser argues that books like “The Yellow Wallpaper were lost in time because of the ideology which determined the works’ content to be disturbing or offensive (417). For example, the editor of the Atlantic Monthly rejected “The Yellow wallpaper” because “I could not forgive himself if he made others miserable as I have made himself (417).” “How we were taught to read” Lanser says, is why a reader canno... ... middle of paper ... ...he impression that Gilman was “trying to drive people crazy,” But rather the intension that the author had set out to give her readers. I would have to agree with Seuss that the wallpaper was a form of language, it was how she was able to express how she was feeling. Works Cited Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Linda Pavlovski and Scott Darga. Vol. 117. Detroit: Gale Group, 2002. p40-181. Lanser, Susan (1989). "Feminist Criticism ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, and the Politics of Color in America". Feminist Studies 15 (3): 415–441 Suess, Barbara A. "The Writing's On The Wall" Symbolic Orders In 'The Yellow Wallpaper'." Women's Studies 32.1 (2003): 79. Humanities International Complete. Web. 23 Apr. 2014. Scott, Heidi. "Crazed Nature: Ecology In The Yellow Wall-Paper." Explicator 67.3 (2009): 198. MasterFILE Complete. Web. 23 Apr. 2014.
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature 's Ancestral House: Another Look At 'The Yellow Wallpaper '." Women 's Studies 12.2 (1986): 113. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.
...r," Gilman uses various symbols to show how men dominated society, and the continuing oppression women struggle to escape. The three main symbols that are reflected to support this: the yellow wallpaper, the color yellow and the nursery. The yellow wallpaper is without coincidence a societal norm that embodies the bondage of women place upon by men during the early 20th century. As the color yellow is often considered a child’s color, often related with sickness or weakness. Gillman mysterious illness is a clear indicator of her weakness and a man’s control over women. The nursery symbolizes how her husband treated her and how women were view on the same level as children. The narrator is stripped from her independence and the nursery represents her alienation. In every aspect "The Yellow Wall-Paper" is a statement of the oppression of the female sex by mankind.
After a long struggle to have some rights, women were not given the right to vote until 1920. For many centuries women have been controlled by men by being told what they can and cannot do. The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is considered a feminist piece through the narrators husband’s words and actions, the environment she stayed in, and the narrator’s own words.
The setting of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is crucial to the reader’s understanding of the narrator 's experiences. Even though the narrator is aware of some illness affecting her, she instinctively insists is caused from lack of artistic expression, but other outstanding factors are portrayed through Gilman’s writing which contribute to the psychosis of our narrator. To consider these aspects Susan , author of “The Feminist Criticism, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ and the Politics of Color in America,” criticizes the degree where Gilman’s story transforms contemporary feminism and social practices.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author of the short story The Yellow Wall-Paper, wrote a story with a focus on mental illness; while doing so she began a feminist revolution in the late 19th century. The narrator, Jane, is attempting to break free from society’s patriarchal ideals and begins to carve a path for women of the future. While the narrator of the story may not have fully escaped, her efforts mark an act of martyrdom for women’s rights and freedom during this era.
Ford, Karen. “The Yellow Wallpaper and Women’s Discourse.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 4.2 (1985): 309-14. JSTOR. Web. 6 April 2011.
The Yellow Wallpaper and The Awakening were two works written during the Age of Expression. The entire country was going through an era of Reconstruction; politically, socially, culturally and econmically . The Yellow Wallpaper and The Awakening are feminist works aimed at the psychological, social, and cultural injustices during the era. According to Mizruchi, “ Cosmopolitanism aroused dis-ease: depression and disaection were prevalent in a society whose pace and variety seemed relentless. Yet the same circumstances also instilled hope. For it was widely recognized that the burgeoning heterogeneity of a newly global America would be a source of enduring vitality.”(Mizruchi, 2008) The wives portrayed in these works defeated the attitudes of their husbands during this patriarchal culture.
The yellow wallpaper itself is one of the largest symbols in the story. It can be interpreted to symbolize many things about the narrator. The wallpaper symbolizes the mental block mean attempted to place on women during the 1800s. The color yellow is often associated with sickness or weakness, and the narrator’s mysterious illness is an example of the male oppression on the narrator. The wallpaper in fact makes the narrator more “sick” as the story progresses. The yellow wallpaper, of which the writer declares, “I never saw a worse paper in my life,” is a symbol of the mental screen that men attempted to enforce upon women. Gilman writes, “The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing” this is a symbolic metaphor for restrictions placed on women. The author is saying subliminally that the denial of equality for women by men is a “hideous” act, and that when men do seem to grant women some measure of that equality, it is often “unreliable.” The use of the words “infuriating” and “torturing” are also descriptions of the feelings of women in 19th century society.
In literature, women are often depicted as weak, compliant, and inferior to men. The nineteenth century was a time period where women were repressed and controlled by their husband and other male figures. Charlotte Gilman, wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper," showing her disagreement with the limitations that society placed on women during the nineteenth century. According to Edsitement, the story is based on an event in Gilman’s life. Gilman suffered from depression, and she went to see a physician name, Silas Weir Mitchell. He prescribed the rest cure, which then drove her into insanity. She then rebelled against his advice, and moved to California to continue writing. She then wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which is inflated version of her experience. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," the main character is going through depression and she is being oppressed by her husband and she represents the oppression that many women in society face. Gilman illustrates this effect through the use of symbols such as the yellow wallpaper, the nursery room, and the barred windows.
Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. “A Feminist Reading of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’.” The Story and Its Writer. Ann Charters. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011. Print.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was originally read and interpreted as a horror story but from the authors perspective, it was an accurate representation of the troubles most women of her time period went through. It's also considered the The text is most commonly viewed from a feminist and a psychoanalytical perspective which brings to light the apparent symbolism within the story as well as digging beneath the wallpaper and understanding the purpose behind the story.
Prior to the early twentieth century men dictated women’s role in society. Charlotte Gilman uses her novella “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) as a symbolic reflection of oppression of women in a paternalistic society. Her novella challenges the idea of women being depicted as weak and fragile.
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 eyes" in the wallpaper is understandable, irrational and erratic designs can form rational patterns in our minds, but to see a woman locked inside of the "bars" of the wallpaper and attempt to rescue her seems altogether crazy. Her fascination with the wallpaper does seem odd to us, but it easy to focus on the eccentricity of her interest with paper and lose sight of what the wallpaper institutes: her writing. It is her writing that keeps her sane, the wallpaper that makes her insane, and from these two very symbolic poles the short story rotates. Gilman's short story is not simply about a lonely woman's descent into madness, but is symbolic of previous and contemporary women writer's attempt to overcome the "madness" and bias of the established, male dominated literary society that surrounds them.
Wohlpart, Jim. American Literature Research and Analysis Web Site. “Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper.”” 1997. Florida Gulf Coast University
Feminist and socialist issues are imperative for progressive thinking and actions in today’s society. These issues were particularly new and diverse within the 19th and 20th century, when men were more in control of woman and women were required to fulfill specific roles. Most notably, writer, Charlotte Perkins Gilman became very active on these issues personally and incorporated them in her stories. One story in particular is The Yellow Wallpaper, where she brilliantly associates real life depictions alongside fiction to illustrate a misguided, repressed woman who has been overpowered physically and emotionally most notably with her medical diagnosis of the “rest cure” conferred by her husband.