Gender And Self-Identity In The Yellow Wallpaper

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The narrator struggled with her self-identity primarily due to her unequal relationship with her husband John unequal relationship. Their disproportionate relationship is a picture of the larger gender inequality in society. John’s patronizing and fatherly behavior toward his wife seems to not be due to her illness. He outright dismisses her opinions and her “flights of fancy” with equal aloofness, while he depreciates her creative impulses. The narrator reveals how restrained she is when she says: “There comes John, and I must put this away,-he hates to have me write a word” (Gilman 309). She is a grown woman, and she is not allowed to express her thoughts even on paper. John speaks of her as he would a child, calling her his “little girl” and saying of her, “bless her little heart!” (Gilman 314). John dominates her judgments on the best course of treatment for herself, forcing her to live in a house she despises, in a room she loathes, and in a remote environment which …show more content…

The yellow wallpaper can be interpreted to embody many qualities regarding the narrator. The narrator exclaims: “It is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw-not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul, bad yellow things” (Gilman 316). The color yellow is often associated with sickness or weakness, and the narrator’s mysterious illness is a case in point of her husband’s oppression on the narrator. The connection to the color and the narrator may also imply how the narrator despises herself. She even states the wallpaper “…Used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house-to reach the smell. But now I am used to it…” (Gilman 317). This exposes her inward perception of herself. She feels gross and disturbed by herself but has become used to being treated

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