Mistreatment of Women

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Recommended: Female roles in early British literature

Relationships become something just about everyone experiences at some point in their life. Each individual handles them differently and there are no two relationships that operate the same way. Minimal communication has the worst consequences on a relationship, but when a lack of equality develops in a relationship it can also lead to damaging results. A relationship or marriage where the men control the women occurs more often than one with the woman being in control. Men are viewed as more powerful and more aggressive in our society, and Mark Peel illustrates this in an essay about male social workers in the 1920’s that, “Perhaps [men were] more interested in care than in masculine exertion, or able to link caring and manhood in a way that many men still find difficult in a new century, they might have found a different way to be a man” (Peel 294). In a society like this, these males found it very challenging to hold back their power because of the way others would make judgments on their lifestyle. A good nineteenth century example of a marriage where there is a lack of communication, the woman is isolated, and the man overpowers is the story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”. This mistreatment of women in a marriage can have a negative effect on the woman, and the story proves this by showing how much the narrator digresses.

The absence of meaningful communication was a key element to why the narrator’s illness got as bad as it did. John, the narrator’s husband, gave the impression that he was ashamed of his wife’s illness. The narrator writes about a conversation between herself and her husband, and she reveals, “He says no one but myself can help me out of it, I must use my will and self-control and no...

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...iage, Power, and Negotiation in Nineteenth-Century Chile." Radical History Review70 (1998): 27. Humanities International Complete. EBSCO. Web. 31 Oct. 2011.

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 1860-1935. The Yellow Wallpaper

Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library

Gordon, Kelly Carolyn. "Class Act(resses)." Theatre History Studies 31.(2011): 3-8. Humanities International Complete. EBSCO. Web. 26 Oct. 2011.

Marcellus, Jane. "Nervous Women and Noble Savages: The Romanticized “Other” in Nineteenth-Century US Patent Medicine Advertising."Journal of Popular Culture 41.5 (2008): 784-808. Humanities International Complete. EBSCO. Web. 26 Oct. 2011.

Peel, Mark. "Male Social Workers and the Anxieties of Women's Authority: Boston and Minneapolis, 1920-1940." Journal of Men's Studies 15.3 (2007): 282-294. Humanities International Complete. EBSCO. Web. 26 Oct. 2011.

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