Starting from the mid-1800’s onwards, the organized Women’s Feminist Movement has been noted to have started at the first Women’s Conference at Seneca Fall and from then on carried itself into the new millennium. Various short stories arose across the centuries in response to the undying and steadfast hope for gender equality. Popular stories such “The Story of an Hour,” “Hills Like White Elephants,” and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” were written with the intention of transferring the theme of feminism to the reader in subtle yet direct methods. In the published piece, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the author Charlotte Perkins Gilman introduces an unnamed narrator and her controlling husband, John, who has rented out a mansion-like summer home for three …show more content…
To convey her message unto the reader properly and successfully, Gilman uses the literary devices of imagery, personification, and conflict.
Whenever Charlotte Gilman used the literary device of imagery in her short story, she painted vivid images in the reader’s mind with her gentle yet fluid word choices. Through this method, she allowed the reader to envision a luxurious mansion sitting in the countryside with a gorgeous garden surrounding the exterior through the help of the following quote, “The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places [with] a delicious garden! I never saw such a garden -large and shady, full of box-bordered paths, and lined with long grape-covered arbors with seats under them” (Gilman 394-395). Along with the exterior of the house, Charlotte described the room she would be staying at in the uppermost part of the house by contrasting it with one of the beautiful rooms on the lower floors. With this technique, the author allows the reader to become well-adjusted to the setting and the source of the narrator’s hysteria, the yellow wallpaper.
The narrator's declining mental health is reflected through the characteristics of the house she is trapped in and her husband, while trying to protect her, is actually destroying her. The narrator of the story goes with her doctor/husband to stay in a colonial mansion for the summer. The house is supposed to be a place where she can recover from sever postpartum depression. According to Jennifer Fleissner, "naturalist characters like the narrator of Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is shown obsessed with the details of an entrapping interiority. In such an example we see naturalism's clearest alteration of previous understandings of gender: its refiguration of domestic spaces, and hence, domestic identity according to the narrative of repetitive work and compulsion that had once served to distinguish public life from a sentimentary understood home" [Fleissner 59].
“There are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder—I begin to think—I wish John would take me away from here!” The late 19th century hosted a hardship for women in our society. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman expressed a form of patriarchy within the story. Gilman never addressed the woman in the “The Yellow Wallpaper” by a name, demonstrating her deficiency of individual identity. The author crafted for the narrator to hold an insignificant role in civilization and to live by the direction of man. Representing a hierarchy between men and women in the 19th century, the wallpaper submerged the concentration of the woman and began compelling her into a more profound insanity.
The unnamed narrator finds herself trapped within a large room lined with yellow wallpaper and hidden away from all visitors by her husband-physician John. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a summer spent in the large ancestral hall to find healing through rest turns into the manic changes of her mind. The overbearing nature of her husband inspires a program designed to make her better; ironically, her mind takes a turn for the worse when she believes the wallpaper has come to life. In Janice Haney-Peritz’s “Monumental Feminism and Literature’s Ancestral House: Another Look at ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ ”, she tells that until 1973, Gilman’s story was not seen with a feminist outlook. “The Yellow Wallpaper” was misunderstood and unappreciated when it was published. The patriarchal attitudes of men in this era often left women feeling they had no voice and were trapped in their situations. Although originally interpreted as a horror of insanity, this initial perspective misses the broad, provocative feminist movement that Gilman supported. With the changes in perspective, over time this work has come to have a voice for women and the husband-wife relationship through the theme of feminism.
Susan B. Anthony, a woman’s rights pioneer, once said, “Oh, if I could but live another century and see the fruition of all the work for women! There is so much yet to be done” (“Women’s Voices Magazine”). Women’s rights is a hot button issue in the United States today, and it has been debated for years. In the late 1800’s an individual named Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote literature to try and paint a picture in the audience’s mind that gender inferiority is both unjust and horrific. In her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman makes the ultimate argument that women should not be seen as subordinate to men, but as equal.
The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) and “The Chrysanthemums (1937) are two famous articles about feminist. The woman in both of two stories are trapped in their marriage and in male-donated society. However, the different ends of those stories reflect author’s point of view about woman’s role in society. The narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper was trapped in her marriage and her husband orders.
...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.
Society continually places restrictive standards on the female gender not only fifty years ago, but in today’s society as well. While many women have overcome many unfair prejudices and oppressions in the last fifty or so years, late nineteenth and early twentieth century women were forced to deal with a less understanding culture. In its various formulations, patriarchy posits men's traits and/or intentions as the cause of women's oppression. This way of thinking diverts attention from theorizing the social relations that place women in a disadvantageous position in every sphere of life and channels it towards men as the cause of women's oppression (Gimenez). Different people had many ways of voicing their opinions concerning gender inequalities amound women, including expressing their voices and opinions through their literature. By writing stories such as Daisy Miller and The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Henry James let readers understand and develop their own ideas on such a serious topic that took a major toll in American History. In this essay, I am going to compare Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” to James’ “Daisy Miller” as portraits of American women in peril and also the men that had a great influence.
The short story titled, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is given its name for no other reason than the disturbing yellow wallpaper that the narrator comes to hate so much; it also plays as a significant symbol in the story. The wallpaper itself can represent many various ideas and circumstances, and among them, the sense of feeling trapped, the impulse of creativity gone awry, and what was supposed to be a simple distraction transfigures into an unhealthy obsession. By examining the continuous references to the yellow wallpaper itself, one can begin to notice how their frequency develops the plot throughout the course of the story. As well as giving the reader an understanding as to why the wallpaper is a more adequate and appropriate symbol to represent the lady’s confinement and the deterioration of her mental and emotional health. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the color of the wallpaper symbolizes the internal and external conflicts of the narrator that reflect the expectations and treatment of the narrator, as well as represent the sense of being controlled in addition to the feeling of being trapped.
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.
In order to comprehend the thesis, it is essential that one understand the viewpoint of Gilman. In the historical context portion prior to Charlotte Gilman’s short story, it is stated that after the birth of her daughter, Gilman went through severe depression. Although Gilman sought medical treatment for her depression,
Before the 19th century, women in literature were depicted as unthinking characters. They did not have much of a role and were treated inferior to male characters. However, one lady determined to change that, was Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper.” This story expresses the challenges that women face that had never been noticed before. Gilman explains women’s troubles through strong symbolism with deep meanings.
The setting in The Yellow Wallpaper serves a significant role in adding substance to the narrative. Most of the narrator’s time was spent in a defaced bedroom that appeared to be a children's room prior to her arrival. This small
Women have been struggled to gain equality with men for century. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's “The Yellow Wallpaper” has a dominant theme of feminine oppression. It is a symbolic work of literature because women in the era in which this story was published were treated in much the same way as the narrator was daily. Male dictatorship over women is out of hand within the illness and treatment of the unnamed narrator, the characters in the story, and the many symbols that serve to confine the main character. They all work fluidly together to create a more tangible and more feminist conclusion.
In Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the author takes the reader through the terrors of a woman’s psychosis. The story convey to understatements pertaining to feminism and individuality that at the time was only idealized. Gillman illustrates her chronological descent into insanity. The narrators husband John, who is also her physician diagnosed her with “nervous depression” and therefore ordered her to isolate until she recuperates. She is not only deprived of outside contact but also of her passion to write, since it could deteriorate her condition. The central conflict of the story is person versus society; the healthy part of her, in touch with herself clashing with her internalized thoughts of her society’s expectations. In a feminist point of view the central idea pertains to the social confinement that woman undergo due to their society.
Advocating social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men, Charlotte Perkins Gilman speaks to the “female condition” in her 1892 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by writing about the life of a woman and what caused her to lose her sanity. The narrator goes crazy due partially to her prescribed role as a woman in 1892 being severely limited. One example is her being forbidden by her husband to “work” which includes working and writing. This restricts her from begin able to express how she truly feels. While she is forbidden to work her husband on the other hand is still able to do his job as a physician. This makes the narrator inferior to her husband and males in general. The narrator is unable to be who she wants, do what she wants, and say what she wants without her husband’s permission. This causes the narrator to feel trapped and have no way out, except through the yellow wallpaper in the bedroom.