Misogynistism In The Yellow Wallpaper

1065 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: a literary analysis of the Yellow Wallpaper

Misogynistic Confinement Yellow Wallpaper depicts the nervous breakdown of a young woman and is an example as well as a protest of the patriarchal gender based treatments of mental illness women of the nineteenth century were subjected to. The narrator begins the story by recounting how she speculates there may be something wrong with the mansion they will be living in for three months. According to her the price of rent was way too cheap and she even goes on to describe it as “queer”. However she is quickly laughed at and dismissed by her husband who as she puts it “is practical in the extreme.” As the story continues the reader learns that the narrator is thought to be sick by her husband John yet she is not as convinced as him. According Until she sees a woman creeping behind the pattern one night tempting her to go see if the wallpaper is actually moving which is when her husband catches her. He always seems to talk down to her treating her like a child in this particular instance calling her “little girl”. In spite of this she sees this as an opportunity to talk to let him know her concerns informing him that she is not getting better as he so adamantly believes. Nevertheless, her attempts are futile for he dismisses her once more putting his supposed medical opinion above his wife’s feelings. The story takes a shocking turn as she finally discerns what that figure is: a woman. As the story progress she believes the sole reason for her recovery is the wallpaper. She tells no one of this because she foresees they may be incredulous so she again feels the need to repress her thoughts and feelings. On the last night of their stay, she is determined to free the woman trapped behind bars. She begins to tear strips of the wallpaper and continues to all night by morning yards of the paper are stripped off. Her sister in law Jennie offers to help but at this point the narrator is territorially protective of the wallpaper. She locks herself in the room and is determined to strip the wall bare. As she is tearing the wallpaper apart she sees strangled heads in the pattern shrieking as the wallpaper is being torn off. At this point, she is furious and even

Show More
Related

  • Essay Outline For The Yellow Wallpaper Mental Illness

    1028 Words  | 3 Pages

    In conclusion, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a complex story, which tells of the ultimate demise of a woman who succumbs to mental illness.

    Read More

  • The Analysis of Jane’s Insanity

    743 Words  | 2 Pages

    “The Yellow Wallpaper” speaks of a woman who struggled of more than mere insanity, but also the pressures of life. Her life continuously seemed to weigh her down and she felt trapped by what was expected of her along with her mental disease. Her environment, marital relationship, and desire to escape her illness thrust Jane deeper into insanity. In the end Jane finds a way to truly escape her disease.

    Read More

  • The Yellow Wallpaper: The Crazy Woman

    1074 Words  | 3 Pages

    Her use of sensory words to describe the wallpaper and how is she is seeing things within the paper show she is not in her rational mind. The woman claims the wallpaper smells yellow (Gilman); a color cannot be smelled. Her senses are heightened because of this wallpaper. In her depiction of the wallpaper’s design, the narrator writes in great detail the images she is discovering. The curves of it “commit suicide”, the patterns “crawl” and “creep”, and there are “unblinking eyes are everywhere” (Gilman). In her mind, she is animating an inanimate object. The wallpaper becomes a terrifying object for both the narrator and the reader. Strangely, she also sees a woman trapped inside of the wallpaper, shaking invisible bars. Possibly due to her own circumstances, she is imagining herself as that very woman inside the wallpaper. Like the woman trapped, she also feels imprisoned and helpless. She repeatedly asks, “What is one to do?” (Gilman) as if she has no choice on what she wants to do. Her use of physical words to illustrate the wallpaper allows the readers to first feel her negative emotions but then sympathize with

    Read More

  • Oppressing Women In The Yellow Wallpaper

    813 Words  | 2 Pages

    The wallpaper in The Yellow Wallpaper represents the societal barriers oppressing women. In the beginning, the narrator, Jane, is very skeptical of the wallpaper but does not question it, thus emphasizing how she is trapped by this oppression. However, as the story progresses, she starts to become more intrigued by it. The wallpaper runs parallel to Jane’s life. The more she observes the patterns, the more she acknowledges that in order to seek liberation, she must resist these restrictions placed by the patriarchal society.

    Read More

  • Analytical Essay On The Yellow Wallpaper

    786 Words  | 2 Pages

    She becomes too weak to write and devotes all of her time to studying the wallpaper. She begins to see shapes in the wallpaper -- to start off with, it looks to her as it is filled with “absurd, unblinking eyes.” The more she examines the wallpaper, the more she sees. She sees a pattern within the initial pattern -- something she describes as “a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure.” She feels as though her condition has not improved and her husband states that he will send her to Weir Mitchell, a well renowned physician, but Jane does not want this. Her mental state starts to decline and she becomes more emotional, crying at almost anything and her obsession with the wallpaper grows, with her becoming determined to find the purpose of the wallpaper’s pattern. The “strange, provoking, formless sort of figure” she initially sees begins to take the shape of a woman, whom she believes is trapped inside the wallpaper. At night when she’s watching this “woman”, she sees her struggling to free herself from the

    Read More

  • Unreliable Narrator In The Yellow Wallpaper

    745 Words  | 2 Pages

    It is very interesting on how the narrator adds more to the story. Since the reader is only able to see what is the narrator feeling or thinking at the moment. We can’t see how other characters might be reacting around her, because it is only first person point of view. However, the narrator does begin to make the reader question what is really happening to her. All though she loves her bedroom, at some point in the story, the narrator begins to describe how much she hates the yellow wallpaper in her bedroom. Her hate towards the yellow wallpaper becomes an obsession, in which she describes that she “sees” a woman trapped in the wallpaper desperate to escape out of it. “…I kept still and watched the moonlight on that undulating wallpaper till I felt creepy. The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out.”-(652). With the narrator taking medication, sleeping in separate rooms from her husband, and now having illusions of a woman being trapped in the wallpaper. The reader can analyze that the narrator is most likely going through a depression or some type of mental

    Read More

  • The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Gilman

    1115 Words  | 3 Pages

    “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Gilman is a chilling portrayal of a woman’s downward spiral towards madness after undergoing treatment for postpartum depression in the 1800’s. The narrator, whose name remains nameless, represents the hundreds of middle to upper- class women who were diagnosed with “hysteria” and prescribed a “rest” treatment. Although Gilman’s story was a heroic attempt to “save people from being driven crazy” (Gilman p 1) by this type of “cure” it was much more. “The Yellow Wallpaper” opened the eyes of many to the apparent oppression of women in the 1800’s and “possibly the only way they could (unconsciously) resist or protest their traditional ‘feminine’ work—or over-work” (Chesler p 11) by going “mad”.

    Read More

  • Examples Of Genderism In The Yellow Wallpaper

    1238 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Mistreated and the Mislabeled. Physicians who are gender biased tend to misdiagnose and mistreat patients because of their ignorance and poor communication. The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a captivating socio-political allegory expressing how cultural expectations can shape and effect the mind of a creative woman suffering from what could be assumed to be a severe case of postpartum depression. Gilman, uses a unique epistolary form point of view using the journal belonging to a character assumed to be by the name of Jane, who is the wife and patient of a physician named John. She provides a chilling and alluring setting to vividly depict the grave consequences of gender bias doctors who are mistreating and mislabeling patients.

    Read More

  • Themes Of Sexism In The Yellow Wallpaper

    1131 Words  | 3 Pages

    Despite this being considered a reasonably good treatment in theory, in practice it restricts the individual’s freedom. For example, the narrator states that she is restricted to “tonics, and air, and exercise, and journeys” as she is “absolutely forbidden” from doing what she loves – writing. Her passion for writing can be generalized as her way of expressing herself, as a way to keep sane; without such capability the narrator gets “exhausted a good deal”. The narrator herself has a good idea of what would make her feel better. For instance, she states doing what she is passionate about will bring her “excitement and change.”

    Read More

  • Treatment of Mental Disorders Exposed in The Yellow Wallpaper

    1986 Words  | 4 Pages

    “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the story of a woman descending into psychosis in a creepy tale which depicts the harm of an old therapy called “rest cure.” This therapy was used to treat women who had “slight hysterical tendencies” and depression, and basically it consisted of the inhibition of the mental processes. The label “slight hysterical tendency” indicates that it is not seen as a very important issue, and it is taken rather lightly. It is also ironic because her illness is obviously not “slight” by any means, especially towards the end when the images painted of her are reminiscent of a psychotic, maniacal person, while she aggressively tears off wallpaper and confuses the real world with her alternative world she has fabricated that includes a woman trapped in the wallpaper. The narrator of this story grows obsessed with the wallpaper in her room because her husband minimizes her exposure to the outside world and maximizes her rest. Academic essayists such as Susan M. Gilbert, Susan Gubar, and Elaine Showalter have a feminist reading of the story, however, this is not the most important reading. The author experienced the turmoil of the rest cure personally, which means that the story is most likely a comment on the great mistreatment of depression, hysteria and mental disorders in general. Despite the claims of Gilbert, Gubar, and Showalter that “The Yellow Wallpaper” is solely feminist propaganda, their analysis is often unnecessarily deep and their claims are often unwarranted, resulting in an inaccurate description of a story that is most importantly about the general mistreatment of psychosis and the descent into insanity regardless of gender.

    Read More

  • The Yellow Wallpaper Misogyny Analysis

    1705 Words  | 4 Pages

    Motherhood is something that the narrator does not experience throughout her story although while looking on the surface she seems to follow the typical bildungsroman or typical familial triangle. What distorts this triangle and forces her to reject motherhood appears to be her evident postpartum depression, but in reality, she does not experience motherhood properly due to the deep-rooted problem of her not being able to love her child. Her incapability of loving her child stems from poor, misogynistic relationship with her husband and his treatment towards her. In order for her to love her child and accept motherhood, she would have to accept John as her husband, and therefore part of her familial triangle. Before, it was an incredibly distorted triangle, although appearing much more normal and even. Currently she is the only one existing within her triangle by having her husband be away most of the time, and having her child be with the nanny. In order for her to accept motherhood she would have to bring her husband back into the previously mentioned triangle. She would not only have to accept him physically, but also sexually and emotionally. He would essentially be emotionally married to her

    Read More

  • The Man-Woman Dynamic in 'The Yellow Wallpaper'

    1415 Words  | 3 Pages

    Her husband forbids her to do anything, particularly write, so she keeps a diary in secret. She writes that when John comes in, she must hastily put the diary away, as he hates for her to write a word (Harper, 1999, p.1736). Her husband’s sister, Jennie, tends to her and the nanny takes care of their baby boy. As her condition worsens, the woman becomes more obsessed with the wallpaper, trying to trace its patterns and becoming convinced that someone is trapped inside, a woman who is trying to get out.

    Read More

  • Patriarchy and the Yellow Wallpaper

    1764 Words  | 4 Pages

    "The Yellow Wallpaper" motivated the female mind of creativity and mental strength through a patriarchal order of created gender roles and male power during the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. While John represented characteristics of a typical male of his time, the yellow wallpaper represented a controlling patriarchal society; a sin of inequality that a righteous traitor needed to challenge and win. As the wallpaper deteriorates, so does the suppressing effect that male hierarchy imposed on women. Male belief in their own hierarchy was not deteriorating. Females began to think out of line, be aware of their suppression, and fight patriarchal rule. The progression of the yellow wallpaper and the narrator, through out the story, leads to a small win over John. This clearly represents and motivates the first steps of a feminist movement into the twentieth century.

    Read More

  • Charlotte Gilman Feminism

    1699 Words  | 4 Pages

    One of her most popular and arguably best work she created was The Yellow Wallpaper. The work dwells in the inner mindset of an apparently mentally sick wife, and describes her descent into madness. But not only does the work provide with a chilling vibe, but with closer inspection, the work sheds light to the male superiority that had over their wives, and also the malpractice of treatment physicians used to help with depression with.

    Read More

  • Free Yellow Wallpaper Essays: The Dominant/Submissive Relationship Yellow Wallpaper essays

    1055 Words  | 3 Pages

    Even when a summer in the country and weeks of bed-rest don't help, her husband refuses to accept that she may have a real problem. Throughout the story there are examples of the dominant-submissive relationship. She is virtually imprisoned in her bedroom, supposedly to allow her to rest and recover her health. She is forbidden to work, "So I...am absolutely forbidden to "work" until I am well again." She is not even supposed to write: "There comes John, and I must put this away - he hates to have me write a work." She has no say in the location or décor of the room she is virtually imprisoned in. "I don't like our room a bit. I wanted...but John would not hear of it." Another factor is being forbidden to have visitors: "It is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work...but he says he would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to let me have those stimulating people about now." Probably in large part because of her oppression, she continues to decline. "I'm getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper. Perhaps because of the wallpaper. It dwells in the mind so!" Here she is expressing her feelings for the room that she has been forced to live in, as it grows on her. At this point it becomes quite apparent, to the reader, that she is not getting any better. In later lines she talks of herself laying on the bed and trying to follow the lines to their destinations, wherever they might lead.

    Read More

More about Misogynistism In The Yellow Wallpaper

Open Document