Gender Roles In The Yellow Wallpaper, By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Me and my family used to live in Texas. I was born and raised in a Republican family where nothing mattered except for what O’Reilly had to say on the “O’Reilly Factor” and if we were all ready to go on time for church on Sundays, and most importantly how well your football team played on NFL Sundays. Us girls, were bred to find a good Christian man who was respectful and made a good living, settle down and have children. You didn 't hear much about a woman who became a doctor or a lawyer, but you did hear about the ones who won the “jackpot” with the rich man in town. It wasn 't till I read “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, that I was introduced to the idea that women should strive to become more than what is expected from

Gilman’s story effectively illustrates the natural superiority role men have over women, and portrays how women naturally submit to the supremacy of men. I began looking back at my experience of growing up in Texas, and I began to see how these gender roles are enforced by society, and applied to the people living there. Growing up in a small town, made it hard for women to escape their gender role, because it was considered “unnatural” to do anything else besides be a wife and mother. Gilman understood the naturalness of gender roles to men and women, she explains in her autobiography, stating it is something we are born with and bred to become, she even coined this phenomenon, calling it genealogy (Weinbaum). Through Gilman’s story, the conflict of genealogy is expressed through the narrator and her husband. The narrator becomes more aware of the conventional role that she is destined to become, and that is why she begins to visualize women stuck in the wallpaper. I felt as if I began seeing things, like the narrator. However, my convulsions were about myself, I began visualising a future that does not have to be centered around finding a good wealthy man and having children. That I as a woman, can step aside from my conventional gender role, and rely on myself, and that I do not have to find a man to fulfill my

Gilman in her autobiography, encourages women to make something out of themselves stating “Women 's work is not solely in the home” (Gilman). My endeavor once was to become a housewife, but after studying and re reading “The Yellow Wallpaper” I do not want to put my fate into the hands of a man, when I have my own two hands right beside me. I want to pursue a career, and keep at it even when I do find the right man in my life, I want to think for myself and not base my own opinions off of the people and society around me. Elizabeth Keyser, a literary critic of “The Yellow Wallpaper” states in an article, “she offers a blueprint for reversing gender roles, and a game plan for encourage a feminist comeback to patriarchy” (Weinbaum). Gilman through her story, encourages women to continue to question the society that we live in, till we feel like we are equal. The narrator does this with her husband, as she continues to write even though she is forbidden to it, and she rips off the wallpaper even though her husband says there is nothing wrong with it. As a woman, Gilman has encouraged me to question my own traditional ways, and to unclothe myself from the conventional norms that have been woven into