Oppression of Women Depicted in The Yellow Wallpaper

In "The Yellow Wallpaper," Gilman shows that the American principle

of liberty did not apply to all Americans in the late nineteenth and

early twentieth century. Specifically it shows that this principle was

not given to women. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," Gilman shows that

American society at the time was oppressive toward women and

that it was dangerous for women to fight back. She establishes a

female narrator that is oppressed literally and symbolically by the

men in her life and the society she lives in. This oppression causes

the narrator, who is suffering from what is probably a post-partum

depression, to sink lower and lower into the depths of insanity. Her

cries for help go unheeded by her husband and she eventually loses

sanity completely. On a symbolic level, this failure of the narrator to

survive in the face of societal oppression can be seen as a warning

to society. Gilman was warning the men of society that they could

not continue to deny women opportunities for equality without

suffering the consequences.

Gilman's female narrator, who either chooses not to fight for her

rights or was unable to do so, loses her sanity at the hands of her

well-meaning husband. Her depression is unexplainable to her and

her husband, who is a doctor. In fact, neither her husband nor her

brother, who is also a doctor, believes that she is even sick. The

narrator feels certain that the "rest cure" prescribed by her husband

is not working. She says that the men in her life are wrong to limit

her activity. She feels that she could escape her depression if given

the chance. "Personally, I disagree with their ideas . . . I believe that

congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me g...

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with a great narrative drive and a shocking ending, to read it only on

a surface level is to miss the deeper meaning of this masterpiece. It

is necessary to look at this story in the context of the time in which

it was written. Gilman lived in a time when women were routinely

oppressed by society and she represented this in her story, both

literally in the husband's treatment of the narrator, and figuratively,

in the pattern in the wallpaper being a prison for the woman or

women behind it. The story, at least on some level, was meant to

be a warning to society that this type of treatment could only lead

to disastrous results. Gilman illustrates this through the narrator's

descent into madness.

The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction, Ann Charters, Bedford/St. Martin's, Sixth Edition (NOT compact) 2003, ISBN: 0 312 39729 1