The adversity women endured in a patriarchal society during the nineteenth century gave birth to female feminism. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was one of the leading feminist during that time. Gilman strived for the oppressed women during the “Victorian Age”, she dedicated her life to social reform believing ever women should have equality. She opened the door for every day women to become involved and to be the masters of their own destiny. The subjugation Gilman faced in the nineteenth century as well as her own experience with postpartum depression greatly influenced her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
Gilman lived in a time of American history where women were subjugated against and using her own life experience, she wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Gilman was born on July 3, 1860, during the American Civil War. After the war, America changed drastically and Gilman was at the forefront of that change. The Industrial Revolution soon took place after the war. The men who no longer fought on the battlefield began to integrate into the workforce. According to Carol Hymowitz who wrote A History of Women in America “The business of business took middle-class men away from their homes, leaving women alone in them. Women of the middle class were isolated from the world of men a commerce.” Women continued to do traditional work such as cooking, cleaning, making cloths and caring for children. Because the men earned money and the women did not, women’s work was not considered “real work” (History).This was the beginning of the inequality among sexes.
Gilman watched and observed the world around her as men portrayed women as nothing more than simple house-wives. Gilman was outraged by laws which made wives property of their husbands,...
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Works Cited
Norton, Mary Beth. Major Problems in American Women’s History. Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C. Health, 1989. p202.Print>
Hymowitz, Carol, and Michaele Weissman. A History of Women in America. New York: Bantam Books, 1978. p64. Print>
Johnson, Greg. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Short Stories for Students. Vol.1. p289. Print>
Beck, Cheryl, and Jeanne Driscoll. Postpartum Mood and Anxiety Disorders. Saubury, Massachusetts: Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 2006. p83. Print>
http://lion.chadwyck.com/searchFulltext.do?id=BIO003857&divLevel=0&queryId=../session/13 36535002_12933&trailId=1369532E38F&area=ref&forward=critref_ft. Chadwych, Healy. Literature Online. Criticism & Reference: Full Text.2001.May 2, 2012.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/postpartum-depression/DS00546. Mayo Claim Staff. Postpartum Depression. June 3, 2010. May 2, 2012
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” has opened many people’s eyes since it was first published in 1892. In the beginning readers only acknowledged Gilman’s story as showing how women with mental illnesses were treated by physicians during the 1800’s. They overlooked the deeper meaning the text contained, and it was not until later that readers discovered it. Eventually, “The Yellow Wallpaper” became known as feminist literature. Gilman does a great job showing how women suffered from inadequate medical treatment, but above that she depicts how nineteenth century women were trapped in their roles in society and yearned to escape from being controlled by males.
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.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman has carefully crafted her sentences and metaphors to instill a picture of lurid and creepy male oppression. The surface of the text contains clues about Gilman’s perceptions of the treatment and roles of women, the narrator stumbling over words like “phosphates”, her being uncertain whether the correct term was “phosphates or phosphites” (Gilman 1684), which clearly shows that in her time women had been overlooked in education and because for a time, only men had that privilege, they were able to learn what they had to in order to earn jobs, which is illustrated in her husband and her brother both being “a physician of high standing” (Gilman 1684). The character Gilman has set up has the qualities and traits of the Victorian woman...
For a long time, women were oppressed and controlled by men. Particularly in early 19th century, these thoughts and stereotypes bound women stronger than ever. "The Yellow Wallpaper", written by Charlotte Perkins, Gilman shows us how men and women were treated differently during early 19th century by alluding men and women figures into her two characters, the narrator and her husband. “Yellow Wallpaper” is about one man who controls the narrator and forces her to hide herself and makes her isolated from the world by giving her wrong diagnosis and one woman who is absolutely forbidden to do anything and isolated from the world because of her “depression”. In the story, Gilman conveyed her view of men as authorized, controlling figure that doesn’t appreciate women’s feelings or thought and women as powerless figure that were ignored and oppressed by men through the use of characterization of husband, wife (the narrator), and symbolization.
The time period in which Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written, it was during the Victorian time period where a man’s word was law. It was a very patriarchal society where a family, community, or society is based on a system governed by men. Where men were the sole bread winners and forward thinkers. A woman’s role and identity in
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 the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, women were often portrayed as submissive to men. Women were seen as oppressed by society as well as by the males in their lives. Both of Gilman’s bodies of works, “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Turned”, illustrate the fight for selfhood by women in a demoralized and oppressive environment. The narrator’s escape from her unbalanced marriage and captivity is her complete loss of sanity. Mrs. Marroner overcomes her husband’s infidelity and emotional control by taking in the vulnerable Gerta and leaving her husband. Their situations cause them and readers to start questioning the “naturalness” of gender roles.
In a female oppressive story about a woman driven from postpartum depression to insanity, Charlotte Gilman uses great elements of literature in her short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. Her use of feminism and realism demonstrates how woman's thoughts and opinions were considered in the early 1900?s.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a 19th century, journalist from Connecticut. She was also a feminist. Gilman was not conservative when it came to expressing her views publically. Many of her published works openly expressed her thoughts on woman’s rights. She also broke through social norms when she chose to write her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” in 1892, which described her battle with mental illness. These literary breakthroughs, made by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, help us see that the 19th century was a time of change for women.
In the article “Catharine Beecher and Charlotte Perking Gilman: Architects of female power,” written by Valerie Gill, the author reviews the writing and ideological beliefs about two feminist, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Catharine Beecher. In the introduction, Gill states, “When we first compare the writing of Charlotte Perkins Gilman with those of her great-aunt, Catharine Beecher, we are likely to conclude that the two could not have had more disparate notions about the kind of lives American women should lead” (pg.17). She then goes on to compare and contrast their different views, based mostly on their fundamental beliefs about how the home is the base of the women’s role in our society. Throughout the article, Gill shows how their basic
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.
The ideas expressed by Gilman are femininity, socialization, individuality and freedom in the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Gilman uses these ideas to help readers understand what women lost during the 1900’s. She also let her readers understand how her character Jane escaped the wrath of her husband. She uses her own mind over the matter. She expresses these ideas in the form of the character Jane. Gilman uses an assortment of ways to convey how women and men of the 1900’s have rules pertaining to their marriages. Women are the homemakers while the husbands are the breadwinners. Men treated women as objects, as a result not giving them their own sound mind.
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.
In the 19th century society was from different from what it is today. Women were not in the workforce, could not vote, or even have a say in anything. Women were not permitted to give evidence in court, nor, did they have the right to speak in public before an audience. When a woman married, her husband legally owned all she had (including her earnings, her clothes and jewelry, and her children). If he died, she was entitled to only a third of her husband’s estate. Charlotte Perkins Gilman wanted to change this. She wanted people to understand the plight of women in the 19th century. In her short story The Yellow Wallpaper she tries to convey this to the reader not just on a literal level, but through various symbols in the story. In The Yellow Wallpaper the author uses symbols to show restrictions on women, lack of public interaction, the struggle for equality, and the possibilities of the female sex during the 1800s.
Advocating social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men, Charlotte Perkins Gilman speaks to the “female condition” in her 1892 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by writing about the life of a woman and what caused her to lose her sanity. The narrator goes crazy due partially to her prescribed role as a woman in 1892 being severely limited. One example is her being forbidden by her husband to “work” which includes working and writing. This restricts her from begin able to express how she truly feels. While she is forbidden to work her husband on the other hand is still able to do his job as a physician. This makes the narrator inferior to her husband and males in general. The narrator is unable to be who she wants, do what she wants, and say what she wants without her husband’s permission. This causes the narrator to feel trapped and have no way out, except through the yellow wallpaper in the bedroom.