What Is Feminism In The Yellow Wallpaper

As Virginia Wolfe once stated, “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman” ( ). The word female has had countless meanings throughout its lifespan. Females can be seen as lowly and cheap, regal and sophisticated, or weak and underutilized. It has only been in the last 70 years that women have gained a foothold in society, to gain the rights they deserve. In the late 1800’s a new writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman questioned society’s views on the idea of being female and tried to make them understand that females are a force to be reckoned with and not a doormat for men to step on. She would not stand to be labeled anonymous. That is not to say that Gilman did not have issues with being a female throughout her life. At a young age, Gilman witnessed

Gilman has stated in multiple papers that the main reason for her writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” was to shed light on her awful experience with this ‘rest cure’. However, she also managed to inject her own feminist agenda into the piece. Charlotte Perkins Gilman chose to include certain subtle, but alarming details regarding the narrator’s life as a representation of how women were treated at the time. She wants us to understand why the narrator ends up being driven to madness, or in her case, freedom. There are untold layers to this truly simple, short story just like there were many layers to Gilman

Firstly, the majority of the characters in this piece are males, while the minority, female characters playing weak and submissive roles. For example, Ford wrote, “John is identified in relation to the patriarchy first and in relation to his wife only afterwards: he is ‘a physician of high standing and one’s own husband’. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the physician is the quintessential man, and his talk, therefore, is the epitome of male discourse” ( ). Gilman obviously shows us how society viewed the man, but also how she viewed the man. Not only was John the patriarchal figure, but he also was the ‘voice of reason’ that stunted the imagination and expressivity of his wife. This ‘voice of reason’ would make him the foil for Gilman’s narrator because she is the voice of insanity. Therefore holding true that the men hold the power, just like the gender roles have always allowed for it to