Feminism In The Yellow Wallpaper

The feminist literary lens addresses the imprisonment of women, and the imbalance of power between the two genders. During the whole of the story, John portrays his male dominant characteristics by treating th... ... middle of paper ... ...power struggle. The Yellow Wallpaper has profound symbolism that transcends from Gilman’s personal life. The dominance of John’s over the wife’s is a clear reflection of the dominant differences between men and women in the past. Through the interaction between the characters, and the wife’s inner thoughts, one can say that the women during the time period had very little or no freedom of speech.

In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, women were often portrayed as submissive to men. Women were seen as oppressed by society as well as by the males in their lives. Both of Gilman’s bodies of works, “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Turned”, illustrate the fight for selfhood by women in a demoralized and oppressive environment. The narrator’s escape from her unbalanced marriage and captivity is her complete loss of sanity. Mrs. Marroner overcomes her husband’s infidelity and emotional control by taking in the vulnerable Gerta and leaving her husband.

Throughout history women have been inferior to men. A woman in a patriarchal society had no opinion of value and was dependent upon man from birth to death both financially and emotionally. Both Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights and Charlotte Perkins Gillman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" show the repression of women, women as a lesser entity, and further the defiance of societal norms as feministic characters. For centuries men have assumed that because of menstruation and child birth women are the weaker sex. It was very common for women to suffer from "hysteria" during these times in their lives.

When Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” she addressed the ideology that society was patriarchal and men were in control of women. John, the unnamed protagonist husband is very controlling over his wife. The women lived with serious psychological difficulties and she could not be healed by her husband, because instead of being there for her emotional John took a logical approach and separated her from the world, leaving her completely isolated and driving her to insanity. The woman desired so much more, she saw many possibilities and was trapped inside this prison of a room. The woman showed how women in this time period struggled greatly, especially when she stated that “[she did not] like to look out of the windows, there [were] so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast.

During the 1890’s married women had little to no freedom or rights, the men controlled the life of the women, therefore marriage was often viewed as imprisonment and a burden. The chains of marriage would change women’s perception of reality, causing women to often question their importance in this male driven world. Kate Chopin’s Story of an Hour and Charlotte Perkins­Stenson’s The Yellow Wallpaper captures the views of these oppressed women very efficiently by using devices such as symbolism, imagery and irony, both tales center around one woman and her fall from reality and life due to the shackles of marriage. Both authors used symbolism to reflect their point of views on marriage, in The Story of an Hour, Chopin states that Mallard suffered

The Yellow Paper is a short story published in 1892, and written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Charlotte tells of a disheartening tale of a woman who struggles to free herself from postpartum depression. The Yellow Paper gives an account of an emotionally and intellectual deteriorated woman struggles to break free from a mental prison her husband had put her into, in order to find peace. The woman lived in a male dominated society and wanted indictment from it as she had been driven crazy, because of the Victorian “rest-cure” (Gilman 45). Her husband decided to force her to have a strict bed rest by separating her from her only child.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” focuses strongly on gender roles which are represented by various symbols within the story. The most active symbol is the yellow wallpaper inside the room in which the narrator resides. Through the symbolism of the wallpaper and other various objects which will be discussed, Charlotte Perkins Gilman illustrates the oppression women suffered from by dominating men. This can be observed early in the story when the narrator says, “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that …Personally, I disagree with their ideas…But what is one to do?” (345). Women were not only oppressed by male acquaintances and the general male audience, but even their own husbands.

The wallpaper symbolizes the dominating effect that men had on women in the late 1800’s. The symbol of the wallpaper grows throughout the story, from the moment the narrator describes the wallpaper as “The color is repellent, almost revolting: a smouldering unclean yellow” (Gilman 474). As she begins to stare and find the meaning of the wallpaper, she begins to find patterns, and particular marking, and because of this she finds a woman trapped behind bars. As she notices as the women tries to escape and the narrator “peeled off yards of the paper” (Gilman 482). The wallpaper represents how women are trapped by the dominating society of men.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is about the unnamed narrator who faces the female struggles in a male dominant society where the woman has to obey the social norms. She is locked away by her husband/doctor, John, who treats her as if she is nothing and cannot do anything for herself. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte

A world where women had rights, control, and power was a fantasy. According to Hall, he states, “Key to all feminist methodologies is the belief that patriarchal oppression of women through history has been profound and multifaceted” (Hall 202). In other words, it is known that the male takes complete cruel supremacy over the years in our history. In The Awakening and “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, they all convey the struggles that females faced to be accepted and to find their identity. To commence, women have been denied self-expression which impacted their daily lives.