Feminism in "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Because her husband, John, does not take her illness seriously and neglects to get her out of the house, her mind cannot take it and she loses her sanity. It should be clear to the reader, since she thinks she and the imaginary woman has worked together to pull the wallpaper down that she believes the women in the yellow wallpaper and she are both trapped and are both working together to escape. (200) Likewise, when she tells John, “I got out at last”, and, “in spite of you and jane! And I pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back”, By her saying this to John tells you she thinks she is free, because she has torn down the yellow wallpaper. She is no longer saying anything about a woman being in the wallpaper, because in her mind, she is now the

The “woman” behind the wallpaper is a symbol of women being trapped by mental health. The narrator even says she is the woman who is trapped behind the wallpaper. The woman the describes the wallpaper as a prison, she says, “…worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars!” (Gilman 426). Gilman is trying to show readers that women have no say in what happens to them when they have mental health problems. The narrator says “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.” she knows what she needs but no will believe her.

Due to many male-dominated marriages in the early 19th century, some attitudes toward women were viewed as weak second-class citizens who were deprived of self-expression and individualism. In the short story The Yellow Wall-paper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman unbinds the limited roles women had in their marriages. She reveals that these women were subjected to their husbands because they were seen as vulnerable and over emotional during this time. Gilman creates an unnamed female character that is diagnosed with hysteria by her husband and physician, John. He believes the best way to cure her case of hysteria is to stay contained in her room without stimulation of any kind, which could further worsen her condition.

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 protagonist believes that there is a woman trapped by the wall, and that this woman only moves at night with the night light. The allusion to this light is not in the beginning of the story, but in the end. “She begins to strip of the wallpaper at every opportunity in order to free the woman she perceives is trapped inside. Paranoid by now, the narrator attempts to disguise her obsession with the wallpaper.” (Knight, p.81) In the description of the yellow wallpaper and what is seen behind it there are sinister implications that symbolize the closure of the woman. It implies that any intellectual activity is a deviation from their duties as a housewife.

Every time she thinks about writing in the journal, she relates how tired it makes her. Throughout the story, John speaks out against her writing, because he feels that it contributes to her depression but she writes anyway, feeling that she is getting away with something. John treats her as if she were ill not depressed. John being a physician, not a psychologist, prescribes her medication that is for someone who is physically ill, not experiencing psychological distress. The journal becomes an outlet for her true feelings that she believes would get her incarcerated if anyone else heard them.

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman, is a feminist short story. It is about a woman who is mentally ill and gets misdiagnosed by her controlling husband. He puts her in a room saying doing nothing will cure her. While in the room she becomes captivated by the yellow wallpaper. She starts to see a trapped woman in the wallpaper.

While she is in this room, her health gets worse and worse but her husband thinks she is getting better and that she is just imagining things. In John S. Bak’s article, he explains the room as a drain to the women’s life because she has locked is this room and has no options on leaving. Bak explains how the room with the wallpaper can, “reduce an artistic and articulate woman to be a beast, tipped entirely of her sanity and humanity and left crawling on all fours in circuits, or smooches about the room” (Bak 39-40). In his article, he explains how Elain Hedges on interpretation on feminist and how she portrays the wallpaper that is living inside the narrator as spirit. Hedges on view during 1973 that the “paper symbolizes her situation as seen by the men who control her and hence her situation as seen by herself (Afterword 51), a view echoed by later critics” (Bak 40).

The narrator finally wins the battle of escaping her imprisonment of John the controlling husband. Jane is finally free of her depression and of her husband’s dominance. It temporarily cost her, her sanity to the point where images were being projected from the yellow wall-paper. The paper was a part of Jane’s neurosis, but also crept into the entire household. In order to cope with the madness Jane found her inner self is an image of a creeping woman trying to escape the patterned wall-paper.

She recognizes that she gets "unreasonably angry with John sometimes" and later wishes he would get his own room. She dreads him coming home because she enjoys exploring the wallpaper and wants to free the woman imprisoned behind it, which symbolizes her own individuality. The narrator feels trapped by both her husband and surroundings, it is clear to assume that the woman she sees behind the wallpaper is a symbol of herself. In The Yellow Wallpaper Gilman seems to go out of her way to express the symbolic relationship between the real and wallpaper woman. Much like the protagonist, the wallpaper woman is described as “all the time trying to climb through.