Analysis Of The Yellow Wallpaper

“The Yellow Wallpaper” was first published in the 19th century by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and was rediscovered in the 20th century. The author is best known for her work and advocacy in political inequality and social justice, but she is greatly acknowledged for her writings on women rights in mirage. According to the main character and narrator of the story, the conventionally accepted nineteenth-century middle-class marriage, which defined a fine line between the functions of the female (primarily domestic housewife) and the working and bossy male led to the lack of full developmental potential of women in society.

“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? . . .So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas” (Gilman 545). In this passage the narrator is using very descriptive and vivid lines to show her dissatisfaction with her husband’s authoritative and anarchy behavior, how her medical situation is used to serve as an impediment towards her movements and her accomplishment. She wants to be free and engaged in everyday activities like every normal person but she is denied of these things by her own husband who assures everyone that everything is all right. She is in strong opposition to such treatment and but her opinion means nothing to him and she has no power to even constructively contribute to her treatment. The narrator is also seen in a position wherein she is told not to worry about her si...

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...led off yards of that paper” (Gilman 636). The narrator has peeled all the wallpaper off the wall. She finally sets the creeping woman free believing, she is free too. The narrator is still in the same nursery with the bars surrounding the windows. She feels she has escaped because it was not the bars on the windows she was concerned about, it was the paper. The bars on the windows and wallpaper represent what the narrator and the creeping woman had in common as far as being trapped. The yellow wallpaper is what smothers and traps her and the narrator is sick of being locked up. Once she tears and rips off the horrific paper she feels her soul escape from the prison that the nursery had become. The narrator is so relieved that she is free. She begins to creeping like the woman. She knows she can’t be put back into paper because it is destroyed, so she is at peace.