Theme Of Gender Oppression In The Yellow Wallpaper

The outside pattern, I mean, and the women behind it is as plain as she can be”, (197). The reader may infer the narrator is feeling more frantic t by the (!) mark she uses in the sentence. And she is becoming more agitated about being alone in her room and the part of the quote, “it becomes bars”, implies she feels like a prisoner. In addition, the quote’s second sentence is more evidence of her illness getting worse; since she now sees a person trapped in the yellow wallpaper who she identifies with.

It makes me think of Eng... ... middle of paper ... ...chniques that Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses in "The Yellow Wallpaper" to suggest that a type of loneliness (in women) caused by imprisoning oppression can lead to the deadliest form of insanity. By using setting, Gilman shows how the barred windows intensifies the young woman's imprisoning oppression, the isolated summer home represents the loneliness the young woman feels, and her hallucinations of the wallpaper pattern indicates her transition to insanity. Wallpaper symbolism is used throughout the story the pattern representing the strangling nature of the imprisoning oppression, the fading yellow color showing the fading away of the young woman, and the hovering smell representing the deadly insanity to which she succumbs. Like the darkness that quickly consumes, the imprisoning loneliness of oppression swallows its victim down into the abyss of insanity.

In "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the protagonist symbolizes the effect of the oppression of women in society in the Nineteenth Century. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the author reveals the narrator is torn between hate and love, but emotion is difficult to determine. The effects are produced by the use of complex themes used in the story, which assisted her oppression and reflected on her self-expression. The yellow wallpaper is a symbol of oppression in a woman who felt her duties were limited as a wife and mother. The wallpaper shows a sign of female imprisonment.

However, the narrator’s condition heighten and in response starts to see images of faces in the wallpaper of her room. The boredom and seclusion of this medicine only allowed her mind to endeavor farther down a path of insanity. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses the wallpaper and the relationship of the couple to expose the narrator’s confinement forced by the husband to lead her to insanity. The story starts off with the narrator’s depiction of the physically enclosing aspects around her that has a great affect on her health throughout the story. The couple moves to a house, which symbolizes security.

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.

The Descent into Psychosis and The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes “The Yellow Wallpaper,” to show how women’s mental illness is addressed in the time. Women were treated as the lesser or weaker sex. Women’s mental illness was highly misunderstood and misdiagnosed. “The Yellow Wallpaper,” illustrates a feminist approach to mental disease. Gilman uses this work to reach out to others to help them understand a woman’s treacherous descent into depression and psychosis.

The pattern of yellow begins to become more of an obsession, being this is her only stimulation due to her confinement. She begins to visualize a woman behind her yellow wallpaper, this woman she sees seems to be trapped pacing behind the paper as if she is trying to free herself. It is not long before the narrator begins with withdrawal pieces of this wallpaper from the wall in attempt to free this trapped woman. As the novel ends the woman who once was in such disgusted with this yellow room now traps herself, locking herself away from

The major symbol of the piece is its title “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The wallpaper in the narrator’s room is a symbol of the oppression she felt from her husband and society. It is clear when the narrator says, “The faint figure behind seems to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (Gilman 661). At the beginning of the story the wallpaper appears rather annoying but innocuous. As the story progresses, it becomes a central obsession and a symbol of the narrator’s imprisonment and madness.

The windows of the nursery are barred. The narrator sleeps on a “great immoveable bed” which “is nailed down.” Yet, the nursery is a paradox of images; the images of confinement are contrasted with descriptions of the nursery. The nursery is “a big, airy room” that has “windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore.” and was, at one time, a “playroom and gymnasium.” The use of contrasting image... ... middle of paper ... ...front her confinement the wrong way. It is through these events in the story that Gilman does seem to be criticizing women for seeking their freedom at the expense of men. Gilman, while attacking the repression and oppression of women, seems also to attack radical feminism by pointing out that contempt for the opposite sex does nothing to further the feminist cause.

Upon further examination, women are then found to be "lame uncertain curves" so full of contradictions they ... ... middle of paper ... ...f the wallpaper and towards schizophrenia. It is easy to see how someone could misinterpret what Gilman was attempting to express in The Yellow Wallpaper, but if you take into account her other books (which are clearly feminist), her intentions become more apparent. She obviously uses the wallpaper as a medium to expose the constraints that were placed upon women in the 19th century. Her attitude towards these restrictions is quite apparent from the narrator's account of the wallpaper and her subsequent insanity from overexposure to it. She despises the general view of women and of their mental capabilities.