Women’s Fight for Social Equality

During the 19th century, in eastern America, men were the heads of families and controllers of the work place, while women had little power, especially over their roles; particularly upper class women due to the lack of necessity for them to work outside the home. “Men perpetrated an ideological prison that subjected and silenced women”(Welter, Barbara). Their only responsibilities were to be modest, proper women who took care of themselves and did not stray from the purpose of motherhood. They were to remain in the home scene and leave the public work to the men; trapped in their own households, they were expected to smile, accept, and relish such a life. Barbra Walter also agrees that women were imprisoned in their homes, and were merely good for maintaining the family, “a servant tending to the needs of the family”(Welter). Many women's emotions, as well as minds, ran amiss from this life assignment and caused them to stray from the social norms set up by tradition. The narrator in Charlotte Gilman's story, The Yellow Wallpaper, is a victim of such emotional disobedience and rebelliousness. As well as the rebellious women in the poem The Woman in the Ordinary, by Marge Piercy.
In The Yellow Wallpaper Gilman shows the true nature of a relationship in the 1800’s and how each genders role played in both the relationship and in society. As the story begins, both the narrator’s husband and brother, regard her as nervously depressed and hysterical. “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression what is one to do?” (Gilman, 35). The narrator’s feelings or actual understanding of what’s going on with herself, do...

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...en a woman conforms to a society’s standards she is not as beautiful as someone who is unrestricted of these limitations. Consequently, comparing her to a “goldenrod ready to bloom” (19) draws implications of flowers blooming in springtime, which are lovely. This allows the reader to see natural life growing from the woman and beginning to break free of the shell society creates. She shows resistance to the ideas of how women should act be look like. The poem ends with potential: the women can change how she is viewed in the world but she has to take the first step.

Works Cited

Welter, Barbara. “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860.” The American Family in Social Historical Perspective. Ed. Michael Gordon. New York: St. Martin’s P, 1978. 373-392.

Kennard, Jean E. "Convention Coverage or How to Read Your Own Life." New Literary History 13 (Autumn 1981): 69-88.