The Yellow Wallpaper Essay

1006 Words3 Pages

Due to many male-dominated marriages in the early 19th century, some attitudes toward women were viewed as weak second-class citizens who were deprived of self-expression and individualism. In the short story The Yellow Wall-paper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman unbinds the limited roles women had in their marriages. She reveals that these women were subjected to their husbands because they were seen as vulnerable and over emotional during this time. Gilman creates an unnamed female character that is diagnosed with hysteria by her husband and physician, John. He believes the best way to cure her case of hysteria is to stay contained in her room without stimulation of any kind, which could further worsen her condition. In a secret journal she keeps …show more content…

She is placed in her own personal prison, with “bars on windows”, “steel rings on the wall”, and a “nailed down bedstead” (Gilman 793,802). These items further illustrate how the narrator is trapped without any way of self-expression in her marriage, although she does not even realize it. All this time he has made her feel inferior to him so she expects his guidance. So when he leaves for town, she has to find another way to divert her dependence, which she places in the wallpaper. The vivid image of the yellow wallpaper begins to illustrate an even larger disturbance in her mind, evoking “foul bad yellow things” to creep into her way of thinking (Gilman 800). The pattern on the wallpaper reminds her of bars, emphasizing a realization, which begins to change the way she sees everything around …show more content…

On a day that John is out, she sees an opportunity to free the woman by peeling the paper off “little by little” (Gilman 801,802). As she keeps peeling, she notices there are other women that are creeping outside, which symbolizes the other women in society who are being patronized in their marriages for this condition. Then she shifts to question, “I wonder if they all come out of the wallpaper as I did?” now realizing that she is the woman being restricted by the wallpaper and that she is just like those other women (Gilman 803). After trying to break in, John finally comes through the door to see her creeping around the room while she exclaims to John before he faints, “I’ve got out at last…so you can’t put me back!” (Gilman 803) This scene represents that she is finally done with how John is treating her and she will not go back to that. The entire image of her fixation with the wallpaper resembles her struggle to break free of this inequality in her marriage and to achieve her own self-expression to find herself. In the last few lines, the narrator says “in spite of you and Jane!” (Gilman 803). Gilman finally hints the main character’s name is Jane, which symbolizes that now her name is said, her identity is discovered and her self-expression is now free to roam after escaping the threshold of the bars in the yellow wallpaper.
Being silenced by John and constricted by the walls around

Open Document