Essay On Oppression In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

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Women are the epitome of strength, power, and intelligence. They are symbols of rage and ferocity as well as emblems of peace and serenity. The systematic oppression of women forces them into submission demanding that they be simple, naïve, and ignorant. Women are expected to be idle objects that fulfill the mold of pleasantness despite the inner workings of their minds. The mind is a complex organ that is heavily influenced by traumatic events and as a result of nineteenth century ignorance, mental illness such as post-partum depression and psychosis irrevocably claim the female psyche. In a futile attempt to mend the brokenness of the female mind, the rest cure, a treatment most likely created by misogynist imbeciles who couldn’t be bothered …show more content…

The rest cure stands in opposition against female liberation by limiting the most essential part of the female persona, which is the mind. Charlotte Perkins Gilman attempts to seek women’s liberation by exploring three different types of oppression in “The Yellow Wallpaper”: condescension, deprivation, and imprisonment. The first way Gilman attempts to seek women’s liberation is by exploring condescension as a type of oppression. John’s treatment of the narrator is reflective of the society’s suffocating treatment of women. He gives her diminutive nicknames and repeatedly laughs at his wife which simultaneously indicates a lack of respect for the narrator and asserts his dominance. Rula Quawas, associate professor of American literature and feminist theory at the University of Jordan, boisterously states, “(…) John takes a patronizing, if well-intentioned, role; he treats the narrator as if she were a little girl who does not know what is best for her. His treatment of her including his administration of the rest cure illustrates the paradoxical double bind of nineteenth century behavioral expectations of women” (44-45). The narrator is expected to take on the roles of womanhood and domesticity; however, she is also expected

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