Identity and Independence in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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Recommended: Critical essay on the yellow wallpaper by charlotte perkins gilman

Although "The Yellow Wall-Paper" is fiction, it can be considered

almost like Gilman's autobiography since Gilman's life seemed to parallel

her main character's life. What Gilman was trying to express in this work

is women's fight for identity and independence (professional work) which

are stripped from them by marriage and motherhood. (p799)

In the story, a woman who just gave birth had some complications which resulted in her so

called "hysteria" or nervous condition. She's not allowed to do anything

but stare at some yellow wall-paper until she ultimately loses her mind.

The narrator, who will be referred to as Gilman for simplicity's sake, is

a writer who is unable to write due to her motherhood. "I did write for

a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal-" (p801) It

was this motherhood that brought her illness so she couldn't write. This

shows how just being a woman is difficult to have a career. Her husband,

John, always tried to keep her in her room without anything to do but

recover from her illness. Without anything to do, especially her writing,

Gilman saw this as being held back from becoming her true self. "John is

a physician, and perhaps ...perhaps that is one reason I do not get well

faster." (p801) She had to be sneaky about writing or else John would find

out. "-having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition."

(p801)

Because of this "prison" that she was in, Gilman started to see

images in the yellow wall-paper that she stared at day-in and day-out.

The images she "saw" were a woman, and then women trapped behind the

yellow wall-paper. "The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there

are a great many women behind... Then in the very bright spots she keeps

still, and the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes

them hard." (p809) The image of the woman and women is how Gilman feels

about her and every other woman during this time period. By being a woman

and married, she became sick and imprisoned much like her women images.

The bars that the woman shook are Gilman's motherhood and marriage; her

freedom would be her independence from John and her writings. At the end

of the story, John faints at the site of Gilman "creeping" around the

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