Women Oppression In The Yellow Wallpaper

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In today’s society, where the mental health of women is considered, it is a tendency for individuals to assume that a woman’s health is directly linked to her social role and marriage. Hearing often that more women are diagnosed with a mental illness, it is easy to assume it’s just genetic gender differences. For women, mental health goes farther than their “hormonal emotions”. This stigma leads to them being reluctant to seek professional help, their cries for help being ignored, and causing them to be more likely to conform to social norms. Like the women in Trifles, The Yellow Wallpaper, and the narrator in “Much madness Divinest Sense”, female oppression causes women to be diagnosed with mental health issues and to conform to society's perception of them. Women who are diagnosed with a mental illness, are more often to conform to society's social roles and to what is authorized by an authority figure. In “Trifles”, Mrs.Wright is accused of murdering her husband, and all the while of her facing the murder charge, she is more worried about her jars of preserves. Mrs. Wright has spent numerous years under her husband’s confinement, that when he was …show more content…

The author of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Gilman, wrote her piece in a way to protest the misdiagnosis of women during the 19th century. During this time period, a large number of women were diagnosed with a mental illness. Doctors would purposely misdiagnose women and attributed the large number to society’s roles and the influence of males. Gilman herself, was misdiagnosed after suffering depression in her life and was advised to the rest cure for her condition. Gilman was mandated to stay at home and to stop writing, although during this period is when she wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Her play was written to protest the false diagnosis by doctors done to women in order to propagate the oppression of

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