The Role Of Women In Charlotte Perkins's The Yellow Wallpaper

For centuries the role of a woman was getting married, stay at home, and take care of their children. The attitude towards a woman that did not act in accordance with the norm of society was criticized, ridiculed, and contemned. People in modern-society has no idea how unequal and injustice life for a woman was; women endured and fought for the ambition of one day to be able to vote, have freedom, and be seen eye to eye as a man. Charlotte Perkins demonstrates in “The Yellow Wall-Paper” how women had to be obedient, weak and inferior. Giving an aspect of how the existence of a woman was naturally to be dominated by males. As a matter of fact, in the series Mad Men, males held key roles in the world of business, specifically in the episode

It showed how men depicted women because traditionally women were frail, hysterical, and vulnerable. However, women tried to break from these bondages; initially Jane listened to her husband’s orders just like how society wanted: to stay inside, rest, and to ignore the old wallpaper. However, little by little Jane rebels against her husband and secretly starts writing observations about the wallpaper and the derange it held within. In the end, she confronts the wallpaper by physically ripping it apart, which was the key to freedom, and escaped from the grasps of her husband (Perkins Stetson). Jane’s absurd behavior shows readers that women also hold a key role in society since women were the ones that had to bear and care for the children; men should have to at least acknowledge the fact that these children that were nurtured would become key figures in the future. The fact that women were not recognized and not taken seriously for their roles is absurd and injustice, and is the reason why they became weird and unstable, which was shown mentally, emotionally, and physically. Oakley writes “The second myth is that inequalities between men and women are surface blemishes…removed merely by cosmetic attention to the superstructure of social relations…” (Oakley 29). It is truly astonishing as to why some people would think that inequality is an irrelevant concept that it’s just outer defects that women would try to use as sympathy. When in fact it not only scarred females physically, but mentally and emotionally too. For instance, when Betty had lost her ability of a housewife in which she thought she only had because it was what society labeled and expected her to do. Oakley states that the true power source which gave this myth priority was when society had created perfect, unbreakable, structured