Gender Roles In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

Today, expectations concerning both men and women’s roles in society have become very similar. Nowadays, women and men are seen as equals and interchangeable within the workplace, but it was not always this way. In the past, gender discrimination was evident and women were considered inferior to men. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman criticizes men’s domination of women in all aspects of life. Perkins negatively portrays the patriarchal structure of the nineteenth century and society’s acceptance of the manipulation and control that many women experienced from men. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman condemns the dominance and power that men assert over women during this time period by revealing that John’s controlling

Even after Jane expresses her distaste of her surroundings, John “laughs at [her] so about [the] wallpaper” (302). Perkins uses John’s response and decisions to showcase how the assigned gender roles during this time period negatively impact Jane’s mental state. John’s refusal to listen to his wife and simply laugh at her requests is an effect of society’s fixed gender roles. Based on his role in society, John believes that he should take complete control of the situation and should not give way to Jane’s “fancies”. John constantly belittles Jane and ignores her requests because he does not believe Jane is rational. He assumes that he knows more than Jane concerning her condition, and since he is a doctor and a male during this time period his diagnosis and treatment prevails over anything else Jane believes will help cure her. Even though John is certain that his treatment will help Jane, it proves to have the complete opposite effect. By isolating Jane, she is left with only a few things to think about. It is evident that over time, Jane’s confinement and boredom forces her to spend her time focusing on the wallpaper. Similarly, Paula A. Treichler contends that John’s “failure to let her leave the estate initiates a new

John’s control and belief that he should serve as both the rational and thinking partner in his marriage means that he refuses to let Jane think for herself. Throughout most of The Yellow Wallpaper, whenever Jane asks John for anything or tries to tell him anything, he constantly ignores her. John even tries to belittle her and he constantly calls her names including “blessed little goose” and “little girl.” These are names for children, and that is how John treats his wife: like a child. He says to her, “I am a doctor, dear, and I know” (12). Because he identifies himself as the more rational, and therefore more intelligent, partner in the marriage, John assumes that he knows more than his wife about her condition.Conrad Shumaker argues that imaginative thinking undermines John’s universe. By defining his wife’s temperament as a danger, he can control the part of the world that opposes his materialistic view (592). But by repressing his wife’s artistic impulses and imagination, John leads her into the exact state that he is trying to avoid. She unravels and loses her grip on reality. Their marriage falls apart, and John loses his wife to madness, the very thing he had tried to avoid. “The Yellow Wallpaper” ultimately shows that in a patriarchal society we are all doomed; no one can survive the rigid gender expectations placed upon them. If John were not so overconfident in his