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Yellow Wallpaper
Breaking Free: The Ironic Liberation of "Yellow Wallpaper"
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a quintessential feminist story, even though it can be interpreted on many levels within that rubric. The narrator is married and has a child; she is thus engaged in some of the strongest trappings of a patriarchal society. However, she is removed both physically and spiritually from her stereotyped role as wife and mother. The narrator's removal from her role is, however, imposed upon her, or forced upon her by her seemingly well-intentioned but condescending husband. Therefore, the narrator calls into question her own dreams and desires. The reader is asked to investigate what a woman's dreams and desires would be independent of social norms or expectations. Although the narrator does break free from patriarchy at the end of the story, she does so symbolically and tragically: which suggests that there are few legitimate roles for women in a patriarchal society. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," Gilman explores...
Thus, it seems that the narrator might have been labeled as being "ill" because she is socially deviant; in the same way that homosexuals were labeled as "ill." The fact that the husband prohibits his wife from writing proves that he is intimidated by her expression. The act of writing symbolizes self-expression. By preventing his wife from writing, he is inhibiting her. Rather than consult his wife as to what would make her feel better, the husband plays a paternal role. His attitude solidifies that of most men in a patriarchal society: that women are subservient like children and can be told what to do. The husband directly talks to his wife as he would speak to a child: "What is it, little girl?...Don't go walking about like that -- you'll get cold...Bless her little heart!" Gilman places her narrator in the room with the yellow…
Yellow Wallpaper is a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman first published in 1892. The story touches upon themes of patriarchy, misogyny, identity, disenfranchisement, and mental illness. Told from the perspective of a first-person narrator, the reader gets a glimpse into the effect of patriarchy on individual women and on women collectively. The story begins when the narrator and her husband John spend the summer in a holiday house. The
Yellow Wallpaper portrays that the protagonist in the story, Jane is mentally disturbed. Due to various factors and social pressures, Jane is affected with a mental condition that causes her to lose her mind and be out of touch with reality. The diagnoses that can be made about Jane from The Yellow Wallpaper are of Schizophrenia, Paranoid Type and Bipolar Disorder Type I. Schizophrenia- Paranoid Type As defined in the DSM-IV (APA,
As the narrator is denied access to the world and the normal expression of her individuality, so she becomes a true prisoner of the room with the yellow wallpaper. Her life and consciousness becomes more restricted until the wallpaper becomes an animated world to her. There is also the implied suggestion in this process of a conflict between the rational and logical world, determined and controlled by male consciousness, and
I fancy it is the pattern that keeps her so still... It keep me quiet by the hour" (Hunt, 179). With this, it is clear that Gilman sees herself as trapped in a very disruptive and confined world, one which ultimately drives her insane; also, this mysterious woman is a symbol of her physical self caught within a maze of confusion and despair, all because of the "yellow wallpaper"
Yet, in this case, the freedom that the author is talking about is not necessarily the liberation of women from the oppressive male society, but the freedom of each individual with mental problems to having a socially integrated life, with little or no confinement that would also make the mental problems develop. In conclusion, although it may seem that "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story written with a feminist
As the text by Davison (2004) contributes, "given that the narrator in Gilman's tale is a femme couverte who has no legal power over her own person -- like her flesh-and-blood counterparts at the time the story was published -- and that her husband is a physician whose pronouncements about his wife's illness are condoned by a spectral yet powerful medical establishment, it is no wonder that his wife grows