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Womens role in society in the yellow wallpaper
Why is the yellow wallpaper important to feminist literature
Why is the yellow wallpaper important to feminist literature
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Women´s Images in The Yellow Wallpaper and The Awakening
The aim of this essay is analyse women´s images in The Yellow Wallpaper and in The Awakening, since the two readings have become the focus of feminist controversy.
Both stories were written by women, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin. But is this fact important to understand the aim of every story? Would they have had the same effect if the had been written by men? I will explore these matters.
I also considered it could be rather interesting to study and compare how heroines act, how they are constricted by patriarchy, how their husbands treat them, and if they triumph or not, in every story.
There is no doubt that the literary written by men and women is different. One source of difference is the sex. A woman is born a woman in the same sense as a man is born a man. Certainly one source of difference is biological, by virtue of which we are male and female. “A woman´s writing is always femenine” says Virginia Woolf
But we all know that Western societies have normally divided many human activities labelling some of them as masculine and others as feminine. So women are naturally femenine, and men are naturally masculine, and this fact should be reflected in their writings. I don´t agree with this assertion, a woman is naturally female, and by means of every culture, she is femenine. The same happens with men.
According to nature all human beings should write in the same way, but according to culture women are forced to write in a different way. And this difference “must be sought ( in Miller´s words) in the body of her writing and not the writing of her body” ( Showalter:252)
The two stories I am going to study were written by women. I think it is virtually imposible to tell, without previous knowledge, that these stories were written by female authors. Virginia Woolf says that “ the first words in which either a man or a woman is described are generally enough to determine the sex of the writer” . I don´t agree with this point, that is very difficult, and it must be also very difficult for specialists. But I must say that there are always something inherently different.
Women have a different way of viewing the world, because of the culture not the nature. They tend to write diaries, autobiographies, poetry…because the cultural context in which they write asks for that kind of literature .
Davidson, Cathy N. and Linda Wagner-Martin. The Oxford Companion to Womenâs Writing In The United States. New York: Oxford United Press, 1995.
The public when the women first came out writing stories they had no clue what to think about their writings. It wasn’t like the traditional men writing where it kept the reader on the edge of their seats and being entertained. The women wrote more of a darker kind of story to where some people would call it a horror story, it was the first time that women had a voice. Women often talked about one thing and it was freedom, they always feel like they have been trapped. Also men wanted to inform and they had a lot of humor in their stories, where the women did not. Female authors had a much darker, melancholy storyline to their writing, while male authors wrote primarily to entertain their readers.
Women have traditionally been known as the less dominant sex. Through history women have fought for equal rights and freedom. They have been stereotyped as being housewives, and bearers and nurturers of the children. Only recently with the push of the Equal Rights Amendment have women had a strong hold on the workplace alongside men. Many interesting characters in literature are conceived from the tension women have faced with men. This tension is derived from men; society, in general; and within a woman herself. Two interesting short stories, “The Yellow Wall-paper and “The Story of an Hour, “ focus on a woman’s plight near the turn of the 19th century. This era is especially interesting because it is a time in modern society when women were still treated as second class citizens. The two main characters in these stories show similarities, but they are also remarkably different in the ways they deal with their problems and life in general. These two characters will be examined to note the commonalities and differences. Although the two characters are similar in some ways, it will be shown that the woman in the “The Story of an Hour” is a stronger character based on the two important criteria of rationality and freedom.
"The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts a woman in isolation, struggling to cope with mental illness, which has been diagnosed by her husband, a physician. Going beyond this surface level, the reader sees the narrator as a developing feminist, struggling with the societal values of the time. As a woman writer in the late nineteenth century, Gilman herself felt the adverse effects of the male-centric society, and consequently, placed many allusions to her own personal struggles as a feminist in her writing. Throughout the story, the narrator undergoes a psychological journey that correlates with the advancement of her mental condition. The restrictions which society places on her as a woman have a worsening effect on her until illness progresses into hysteria. The narrator makes comments and observations that demonstrate her will to overcome the oppression of the male dominant society. The conflict between her views and those of the society can be seen in the way she interacts physically, mentally, and emotionally with the three most prominent aspects of her life: her husband, John, the yellow wallpaper in her room, and her illness, "temporary nervous depression." In the end, her illness becomes a method of coping with the injustices forced upon her as a woman. As the reader delves into the narrative, a progression can be seen from the normality the narrator displays early in the passage, to the insanity she demonstrates near the conclusion.
The recommended application rate of each fungicide and if the air treatment really can remove senesced flowers effectively.
Gendered strategies, in the criticism of early fiction, made feminine fiction incapable of excellence. By using conventional heterosexual relationships in their prefaces, authors only succeed in supporting the masculine control over fiction. The appraisals women gained only reinforced their inferior status. "Criticism placed female authors in a specific and confined critical sphere, while it located male authors in an other, more respected field" (375). By aligning their works with popular male literature, women inadvertently strengthened male authority. Women were only granted recognition in terms of their limited social stature. It is these gendered values and strategies that makes the history of the novel and feminine achievement difficult to assess.
context out of which a work of literature emerges molds the interpretation of gender in that work.
Burpee, Lee, and Richard Latin. 2008. "Reassessment of Fungicide Synergism for Control of Dollar Spot." Plant Disease 92.4: 601-06.
The feministic action is paralleled in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” through many gender-based ideological theories that are designed to bring the reader back to the question of the wallpaper which symbolizes the narrator 's oppressive situation. The use of the narrators double-voiced discourse with ironic understatements and negotiations helps her assert herself against John representing the “language of the powerless.” The wallpaper, chaotic, and conflicting may perhaps represent what the narrators circumstances have evolved into. The narrator is confounded by a contradictory style within the wallpaper then the situational position of the narrator: it is “flamboyant” and “pronounced”, yet also “lame”, “uncertain”, and “dull” (Gilman 487). The wallpaper contains vivid images and symbols which reveal the feminist perspective.
In all the stories, the authors commonly depict propriety in marriage, a yearning for freedom from convention, loveless marriages, wealth and unconventional women. Chopin and Gilman imply that the mental illnesses experienced by their characters are due mainly, to male oppression. Chopin and Wharton write about infidelity, passion and love; and Chopin and Gilman write about women working for pay. All authors write about women who feel trapped by tradition and convention and all display abhorrence toward the social expectations set for women. Bibliography:..
Virginia Woolf, an original, thought-provoking feminist author, influenced women to fight for equality and to question the opportunities for women in literature. With her diaries, novels and poems, she stunned her readers with something they have not seen much before: women rebelling. Woolf was frustrated with women and the untouched and suppressed skills they harbor. She once said, “Women have sat indoors all these millions of years, so that by this time the very walls are permeated by their created force, which has, indeed, so overcharged the capacity of bricks and mortar that it must needs harness itself to pens and brushes and business and politics” (Feminist 595). Woolf sought to eliminate the perceived ideas of women and enlighten readers of the skills that women possess.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a literary exaggeration of Gilman’s personal battle with depression that exploits not only the flaws in the perception of depression in the late 1800s but the flaws in that society’s views on women as well. Set up in a diary format, the entry document a three month stay at a secluded mansion where the narrator’s physician husband John, who has told friends and relatives that there is “really nothing the matter with [his wife],” has brought her in on the sabbatical, of sorts, in hopes of treating her “nervous depression” (394, par.10). The diary format comes from the fact that the narrator is not openly allowed to write or “work” as part of her treatment. The ledger becomes her secret confidante and as well as a map of how her depression becomes a full blown psychosis. Having been instructed by her husband not to focus on her illness she sets her sights on the yellow “flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” on the wallpaper of the converted attic/nursery that John has commandeered as their bedroom for the summer (395, par. 34). As the narrator forces herself into submission in the presents of her husband and his sister Jennie, her depression seem so transform into a state of paranoid hallucinations fueled by her obsession with the yellow wallpaper. Finally the inward turmoil manifest it’s self in a very outward way and erupts into full on madness with the narrator believing she is the woman that she has seen in the wallpaper trying to escape. Having noted the slow decline of the narrator from imaginative and independent to submissive and secretive strikes a personal cord with me, as I to have suffered with depression in my personal life. I plan to identify...
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.
There is much debate in feminist circles over the "best" way to liberate women through writing. Some argue that a female writer should, in an effort to recapture her stolen identity, attack her oppressive influences and embrace her femininity, simultaneously fostering dimorphic literary, linguistic, and social arenas. Others contend that the feminization of writing pigeonholes women into an artistic slave morality, a mindset that expends creative energy on battle and not production, and inefficiently overturns stereotypes and foments positive social change; rather, one should lose gender self-consciousness and write androgynously.
Sandra M.Gilbert and Susan Gubar, authors of the Madwoman in the Attic: the Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination (1979) assert that the male voice has for too long been dominant. Because males have also had the power of the pen and therefore the press, they have been able to ...