Attitudes Towards Women In The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Once her husband, John, realizes the deepness of depression that his wife is in due to her birth of their child he decides to take action. He decides to isolate his wife from the world for her own betterment. Once arriving in her newfound place of isolation where there is no stimulation, except for her journal, the narrator is placed within a room that is lined with yellow wallpaper. This yellow room is meant to free her from any stresses, but her dislike for the wallpaper concerns her. The pattern of yellow begins to become more of an obsession, being this is her only stimulation due to her confinement.

The narrator of this short story was driven mad by the wallpaper that surrounded her in this room. The yellow wallpaper, with its strange, formless pattern, disturbed her. Throughout this short story the author used a variety of symbols and themes such was the role of women, the role taken after childbirth, the Yellow Wallpaper itself, and the journal. All of these examples give proof that the narrator wanted not to be trapped behind bars, but to be free and live her life. To begin with, the most important theme that comes into play is the role of women during this decade.

This treatment confines her to her room upstairs. She is also required to have plenty of bed rest and is restricted from people and stimulation. However, one can say that such instructions will cause the illness to continue because of a lack of activity, isolation from the outside world, especially family members. It appears the woman in the story wants to ... ... middle of paper ... ...rld and the woman represents her. Ultimately, John’s wife concludes that her only escape from the room is to tear down the wallpaper.

Something that the narrator still does not realize, she only feels the need to release the woman trapped in the wall. She refers to her room as a prison continuously. As she begins to feel isolated she projects her feelings on the yellow wallpaper, but the idea that the room is her prison goes from figurative to reality as insulation deepens her need to escape in some way. “Every time the narrator speaks, she is interrupted and contradicted until she begins to interrupt and contradict herself.” (Berman, p.55) She has her own plan for recovery. But unfortunately, her husband does not listen.

This resembles and shows imagery of the woman and her life. This story is much more than a woman that is insane and is ignored by her husband. She wants to escape her depression, and the woman she imagines trapped behind the wallpaper is only an image of herself. The struc... ... middle of paper ... .... Her husband disregards her and leaves her in the room alone to heal her depression without being able to experience what she is going through.

The Yellow Wallpaper In the grips of depression and the restrictions prescribed by her physician husband a woman struggles with maintaining her sanity and purpose. As a new mother and a writer, and she is denied the responsibility and intellectual stimulation of these elements in her life as part of her rest cure. Her world is reduced to prison-like enforcement on her diet, exercise, sleep and intellectual activities until she is "well again". As she gives in to the restrictions and falls deeper into depression, she focuses on the wallpaper and slides towards insanity. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story written from a first-person perspective about a young woman's mental deterioration during the 1800's and the adverse affects of the restriction place on her.

The setting of the room symbolizes the loneliness the narrator is undergoing. The narrator has her mind encased that there is a woman struggling and in her solitary room, she feels its true and she is even seen fighting for her. The author used the room to symbolize what the main character was going through all alone in the isolated estate where she was brought by her husband. The yellow paper played a distinct reason for the narrator’s madness. In her writings, she explains that the more she became insane, the more the wall paper became a big issue to her that is why she smudged ultimately.

The yellow wallpaper is symbolic of a women’s place in society within the nineteenth century. It was not commonplace, or deemed acceptable, for women to be financially independent and/or engage in intellectual activity. The wallpaper is symbolic of those economic, intellectual, and social restrictions women were held to, as well as the domestic lives they were expected to lead. The narrator is so restricted by these social norms that her proper name is never given within the story, her only identity is “John’s wife”. At the climax of the story, the narrator identifies completely with the woman in the wallpaper and believes that by tearing the wallpaper, both she and the woman would be freed of their domestic prisons, “…there are so many of those

She is in the middle of a nervous breakdown, where her husband, who is also her doctor, moves her into a house away from her life so that she may get some “rest.” This resting treatment consists of literally nothing; no writing, no drawing, just resting. In fact this rest drove her insane, and she suffered a complete break from reality (Trimmer). The two main characters in the story are the narrator, and her husband John who is her doctor. These characters greatly affect the story in many ways. On top of the narrator who is instrumental, because it is her story, without John the narrator would have never been prescribed the resting treatment and would have eventually escaped her depression by creative expression.

She watches this woman and in the end tries to free her by tearing down all the nasty looking wallpaper. I think that a theme behind this story is the feminist views of the time. This woman is pretty much held captive by John, his sister and the housekeeper. This is shown when she says, "He is very careful loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction" (p. 12). She tries to make light of the situation by explaining how much John loves and cares about her but every time she tries to say something nice, it comes out making the situation seem worse.