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Early american literature's portrayal of women
Masculinity in american society 20th c
Early american literature's portrayal of women
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Today, expectations concerning both men and women’s roles in society have become very similar. Nowadays, women and men are seen as equals and interchangeable within the workplace, but it was not always this way. In the past, gender discrimination was evident and women were considered inferior to men. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman criticizes men’s domination of women in all aspects of life. Perkins negatively portrays the patriarchal structure of the nineteenth century and society’s acceptance of the manipulation and control that many women experienced from men. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman condemns the dominance and power that men assert over women during this time period by revealing that John’s controlling …show more content…
Even after Jane expresses her distaste of her surroundings, John “laughs at [her] so about [the] wallpaper” (302). Perkins uses John’s response and decisions to showcase how the assigned gender roles during this time period negatively impact Jane’s mental state. John’s refusal to listen to his wife and simply laugh at her requests is an effect of society’s fixed gender roles. Based on his role in society, John believes that he should take complete control of the situation and should not give way to Jane’s “fancies”. John constantly belittles Jane and ignores her requests because he does not believe Jane is rational. He assumes that he knows more than Jane concerning her condition, and since he is a doctor and a male during this time period his diagnosis and treatment prevails over anything else Jane believes will help cure her. Even though John is certain that his treatment will help Jane, it proves to have the complete opposite effect. By isolating Jane, she is left with only a few things to think about. It is evident that over time, Jane’s confinement and boredom forces her to spend her time focusing on the wallpaper. Similarly, Paula A. Treichler contends that John’s “failure to let her leave the estate initiates a new …show more content…
John’s control and belief that he should serve as both the rational and thinking partner in his marriage means that he refuses to let Jane think for herself. Throughout most of The Yellow Wallpaper, whenever Jane asks John for anything or tries to tell him anything, he constantly ignores her. John even tries to belittle her and he constantly calls her names including “blessed little goose” and “little girl.” These are names for children, and that is how John treats his wife: like a child. He says to her, “I am a doctor, dear, and I know” (12). Because he identifies himself as the more rational, and therefore more intelligent, partner in the marriage, John assumes that he knows more than his wife about her condition.Conrad Shumaker argues that imaginative thinking undermines John’s universe. By defining his wife’s temperament as a danger, he can control the part of the world that opposes his materialistic view (592). But by repressing his wife’s artistic impulses and imagination, John leads her into the exact state that he is trying to avoid. She unravels and loses her grip on reality. Their marriage falls apart, and John loses his wife to madness, the very thing he had tried to avoid. “The Yellow Wallpaper” ultimately shows that in a patriarchal society we are all doomed; no one can survive the rigid gender expectations placed upon them. If John were not so overconfident in his
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's, The Yellow Wallpaper we are introduced to characters that can be argued to be representational of society in the 19th century. The narrator, wife to a seemingly prominent doctor, gives us a vision into the alienation and loss of reality due to her lack of labor. I also contend however that this alienation can also be attributed to her infantilization by her husband, which she willingly accepts. "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage" (1). The narrator here realizes her place among the order of society and even notes that it is to be expected. She is aware of her understanding that things between she and her husband are not equal not only because he is a doctor but because he is a man, and her husband.
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s bodies of work, Gilman highlights scenarios exploring traditional interrelations between man and woman while subtexting the necessity for a reevaluation of the paradigms governing these relations. In both of Gilman’s short stories, “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Turned”, women are victimized, subjected and mistreated. Men controlled and enslaved their wives because they saw them as their property. A marriage was male-dominated and women’s lives were dedicated to welfare of home and family in perseverance of social stability. Women are expected to always be cheerful and good-humored. Respectively, the narrator and Mrs. Marroner are subjugated by their husbands in a society in which a relationship dominated by the male is expected.
At the time Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” she was considered a prominent feminist writer. This piece of background information allows the readers to see Gilman’s views on women’s rights and roles in the 18th century; “The Yellow Wallpaper” suggests that women in the 18th century were suppressed into society’s marital gender roles. Gilman uses the setting and figurative language, such as symbolism, imagery, and metaphors to convey the theme across.
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," the reader is treated to an intimate portrait of developing insanity. At the same time, the story's first person narrator provides insight into the social attitudes of the story's late Victorian time period. The story sets up a sense of gradually increasing distrust between the narrator and her husband, John, a doctor, which suggests that gender roles were strictly defined; however, as the story is just one representation of the time period, the examination of other sources is necessary to better understand the nature of American attitudes in the late 1800s. Specifically, this essay will analyze the representation of women's roles in "The Yellow Wallpaper" alongside two other texts produced during this time period, in the effort to discover whether Gilman's depiction of women accurately reflects the society that produced it.
In the 19th century, women were not seen in society as being an equal to men. Men were responsible for providing and taking care of the family while their wives stayed at home not allowed leaving without their husbands. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes about a woman named Jane who is trapped by society’s cage and tries to find herself. Throughout the story, the theme of self-discovery is developed through the symbols of the nursery, the journal and the wallpaper.
Susan B. Anthony, a woman’s rights pioneer, once said, “Oh, if I could but live another century and see the fruition of all the work for women! There is so much yet to be done” (“Women’s Voices Magazine”). Women’s rights is a hot button issue in the United States today, and it has been debated for years. In the late 1800’s an individual named Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote literature to try and paint a picture in the audience’s mind that gender inferiority is both unjust and horrific. In her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman makes the ultimate argument that women should not be seen as subordinate to men, but as equal.
The character of the husband, John, in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is introduced as a respected physician and a caring husband who strives to improve the mental health of his wife, the narrator, who is diagnosed with temporary nervous condition. John tries throughout the story to apply professional treatment methods and medications in his approach to helping his wife gain strength. However, his patient, his wife, seems to disregard John’s professional opinions and act as if she is following his advices only during his awakening presence with her. The narrator seems to be in need of John’s positive opinion about the status of her mental condition in order to avoid the criticism even though she disagrees with his treatment methodology. John, without doubt, cares for his wife and her wellbeing, but he does not realize how his treatment method negatively impacts their relationship his wife’s progress towards gaining strength. Although John was portrayed as a caring and a loving physician and husband to the narrator through out most of the story, he was also suggested as being intrusive and directive to a provoking level in the mind of the narrator.
The narrator is trying to get better from her illness but her husband “He laughs at me so about this wallpaper” (515). He puts her down and her insecurities do not make it any better. She is treated like a child. John says to his wife “What is it little girl” (518)? Since he is taking care of her she must obey him “There comes John, and I must put this away, he hates to have me write a word”. The narrator thinks John is the reason why she cannot get better because he wants her to stay in a room instead of communicating with the world and working outside the house.
Finally, the yellow wallpaper presents perspectives of how men control females. As stated previously, In the story, John uses his power as a doctor to control his wife. He encaged his wife in a summer home, placing her in a room filled with barricades and many faults. As a human she is deprived of her rights and her ability to form house duties is taken away so she can rest as he calls it. Without a doubt, she fell into insanity because of the situation she was placed in. When she ripped the paper off the wall, it was a sign of freedom from her husband, and the bars that held her captive for weeks. Certainly she has a vivid imagination and being placed in bondage and unable to write which in turn lead her to mental health problems.
Once John gains access to the woman in the wallpaper’s sanctum, he faints. In response Jane says, “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time.” (Stetson 656) Her words carry an implication that she perceives his act of fainting as one of weakness. By refraining from using John’s name, Jane robs him of his identity and places him in a gender group devoid of individuality. Additionally, Jane cannot seem to understand the reason that John fainted. To her the act of fainting seems to be irrational and unwarranted. Jane’s confusion at this juncture illustrates a loss of self-awareness. She fails to realize that “creeping” across the floor in a room where she has just stripped the walls of their wallpaper is frightening. Jane also mentions that she has to “creep over” her husband every time she traverses her path around the room. The fact that she is placed above John, when she is already close to the floor, speaks to the dominance that she can now exert over him, though it is important to note that the dominance is only manifested in the room with the yellow wallpaper and not anywhere else. Whether Jane continues the exertion of this dominance is not written in the story. However, one can infer that since Jane has apparently
Women have been mistreated, enchained and dominated by men for most part of the human history. Until the second half of the twentieth century, there was great inequality between the social and economic conditions of men and women (Pearson Education). The battle for women's emancipation, however, had started in 1848 by the first women's rights convention, which was led by some remarkable and brave women (Pearson Education). One of the most notable feminists of that period was the writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She was also one of the most influential feminists who felt strongly about and spoke frequently on the nineteenth-century lives for women. Her short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" characterizes the condition of women of the nineteenth century through the main character’s life and actions in the text. It is considered to be one of the most influential pieces because of its realism and prime examples of treatment of women in that time. This essay analyzes issues the protagonist goes through while she is trying to break the element of barter from her marriage and love with her husband. This relationship status was very common between nineteenth-century women and their husbands.
"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 -- a slight hysterical tendency -- what is one to do?" (Gilman 1). Many women in the 1800's and 1900's faced hardship when it came to standing up for themselves to their fathers, brothers and then husbands. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator of the story, "The Yellow Wallpaper", is married to a physician, who rented a colonial house for the summer to nurse her back to health after her husband thinks she has neurasthenia, but actually suffers from postpartum depression. He suggested the 'rest cure'. She should not be doing any sort of mental or major physical activity, her only job was to relax and not worry about anything. Charlotte was a writer and missed writing. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is significant to literature in the sense that, the author addresses the issues of the rest cure that Dr. S. Weir Mitchell prescribed for his patients, especially to women with neurasthenia, is ineffective and leads to severe depression. This paper includes the life of Charlotte Perkins Gilman in relation to women rights and her contribution to literature as one of her best short story writings.
Traditionally, men have held the power in society. Women have been treated as a second class of citizens with neither the legal rights nor the respect of their male counterparts. Culture has contributed to these gender roles by conditioning women to accept their subordinate status while encouraging young men to lead and control. Feminist criticism contends that literature either supports society’s patriarchal structure or provides social criticism in order to change this hierarchy. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts one women’s struggle against the traditional female role into which society attempts to force her and the societal reaction to this act.
Gender roles seem to be as old as time and have undergone constant, but sometime subtle, revisions throughout generations. Gender roles can be defined as the expectations for the behaviors, duties and attitudes of male and female members of a society, by that society. The story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” is a great example of this. There are clear divisions between genders. The story takes place in the late nineteenth century where a rigid distinction between the domestic role of women and the active working role of men exists (“Sparknotes”). The protagonist and female antagonists of the story exemplify the women of their time; trapped in a submissive, controlled, and isolated domestic sphere, where they are treated as fragile and unstable children while the men dominate the public working sphere.
In “ The Yellow Wallpaper”, we can ultimately see the separation of gender roles within the two characters. John in the story is the upper class male, upholding a high standing occupation as a physician, while his wife does not even receive a name, assumed the narrator of the text. Being that John receives a role within society, while his wife is recognized as nameless; it is evident that the two characters have developed an overall inequality taking on their gender roles. John is represented as “practical in the extreme, He has no patience with faith, an int...