Throughout time and literature, the male supremacy and oppression of women have been the topic of many literary debates and creative writings. Feminist theorists are and have always been on a perpetual literary high; women writers such as Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar in 1979 and Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892 wrote about the oppression of women and the liberation that they were adamant about receiving. This spark for freedom in a patriarchal society drove Charlotte Perkins Gilman to write her infamous short story “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” In writing this story, Gilman depicts an oppressed woman taken from society and condemned to an oppressive treatment that paralyses her as a human; the distributer of this treatment is the capitalist patriarchy. …show more content…
Thus, women are applicable to being machines as they are this artificial construction of man. Understanding women as being machines affirms the idea of the cyborg in “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” Haraway also says, “machines were not self-moving, self-designing, autonomous. They could not achieve man’s dream, only mock it. They were not man, an author to himself, but only a caricature of that masculinist reproductive dream” (Haraway 11). Applying this facet to the woman in “The Yellow Wall-Paper” reveals her under a new light. The narrator is an interpretation of the classic oppressed female who is silenced by the dominant, capitalist male and, therefore, lacks an identity as a human. Haraway states that this lack of self is what contributes to her definition of the cyborg; the narrator is part machine because she has no sense of self apart from …show more content…
Gilman introduces this capitalist man who suppresses the narrator in “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” John, the alleged husband of the main character is a physician; of course he is. John exhibits this capitalist, male supremacy throughout the entire short story: “John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures” (Gilman 792). He is this hyper-masculine, domineering man who also happens to be a physician. It’s not by chance that he renders a desire for monetary figures, as do many capitalists. Mary Mahowald’s study on Marxism aids in identifying John as a capitalist, patriarchal figure: “The bourgeoisie are the "Johns" who pay workers fixed wages while setting no limits to the capital they themselves acquire. The captains of industry thus expand their own options by constraining those of the people who do the work on which their profits depend (44). The capitalist male is dominating all of society through monetary means, and their names also happen to be John. Not only is John ranked high in society, but the other male that is mentioned in the story also happens to be a physician: “My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing” (Gilman 792). The
Quawas tells how there is a “sharp contrast between male and female nature.” Quawas reveals that Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s true purpose is to fight for women’s rights and equality, instead of being seen as just an object to nurture the children and do the chores at home. Quawas suggests that since Charlotte Perkins Gilman cares so deeply about presenting the deeply hurtful ways women can be treated like because she lived through the era of the women being the stay-at-home-smiling-trophy-wives and got to witness the incline of women’s rights movements and the empowerment of women. Quawas says that “The Yellow Wallpaper is a particularly interesting and rich example of her audacious and defiant writing.” she says this because The Yellow Wallpaper explores the feminine rebellion against the “rest cure”. Though the narrator’s doctor husband believes in the “rest cure”, the narrator steadily makes efforts to express herself in private, such as through her journal entries. Historically the author of the yellow wallpaper went through the oppression of women and the rise of empowerment of women. She got to witness both, which allows for the inference of women empowerment being hidden throughout the yellow
Misogynistic Confinement Yellow Wallpaper depicts the nervous breakdown of a young woman and is an example as well as a protest of the patriarchal gender based treatments of mental illness women of the nineteenth century were subjected to. The narrator begins the story by recounting how she speculates there may be something wrong with the mansion they will be living in for three months. According to her, the price of rent was way too cheap and she even goes on to describe it as “queer”. However, she is quickly laughed at and dismissed by her husband, who as she puts it “is practical in the extreme.” As the story continues, the reader learns that the narrator is thought to be sick by her husband John, yet she is not as convinced as him.
... The women had no choice but to go along with the men’s choices. Nineteenth century women did not have much of a role in society, and it was meant to stay that way. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is classified as a feminist text because it portrays the desire for women to escape the society that has neglected them for so many years. Works Cited Ford, Karen.
The Web. The Web. 29 June 2015. http://www.womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/mahin.htm Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. “A Feminist Reading of ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’.” The Story and Its Writer.
Susan B. Anthony, a woman’s rights pioneer, once said, “Oh, if I could but live another century and see the fruition of all the work for women! There is so much yet to be done” (“Women’s Voices Magazine”). Women’s rights is a hot button issue in the United States today, and it has been debated for years. In the late 1800’s an individual named Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote literature to try and paint a picture in the audience’s mind that gender inferiority is both unjust and horrific. In her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman makes the ultimate argument that women should not be seen as subordinate to men, but as equal.
At the time Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” she was considered a prominent feminist writer. This piece of background information allows the readers to see Gilman’s views on women’s rights and roles in the 18th century; “The Yellow Wallpaper” suggests that women in the 18th century were suppressed into society’s marital gender roles. Gilman uses the setting and figurative language, such as symbolism, imagery, and metaphors to convey the theme across.
The Yellow Wallpaper was written as a realism story. It showed how woman felt they had the same opportunities as men in their personal choices. In this story, the woman expressed her worries to her husband who through good intentions, required that his wife stay in bed 24/7, and not do any of the things she would normally do. In effect his wife became worse until she reached the limit. The behavior of the husband at this time was completely normal. Men were the higher power over women and women, like the one in this story, felt that they couldn?t stand count for themselves.
Throughout the nineteenth century the roles played in culture and society by men and women started to change. Women began achieving rights that allowed them to further their education and careers outside of the home. Even though these rights began to form, men were still considered superior to women. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” there is a prominent theme of men controlling women. The two most active characters, John and his wife, demonstrate the relationship between a man and a woman in this time period.
Women have been mistreated, enchained and dominated by men for most part of the human history. Until the second half of the twentieth century, there was great inequality between the social and economic conditions of men and women (Pearson Education). The battle for women's emancipation, however, had started in 1848 by the first women's rights convention, which was led by some remarkable and brave women (Pearson Education). One of the most notable feminists of that period was the writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman. She was also one of the most influential feminists who felt strongly about and spoke frequently on the nineteenth-century lives for women. Her short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" characterizes the condition of women of the nineteenth century through the main character’s life and actions in the text. It is considered to be one of the most influential pieces because of its realism and prime examples of treatment of women in that time. This essay analyzes issues the protagonist goes through while she is trying to break the element of barter from her marriage and love with her husband. This relationship status was very common between nineteenth-century women and their husbands.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a 19th century, journalist from Connecticut. She was also a feminist. Gilman was not conservative when it came to expressing her views publically. Many of her published works openly expressed her thoughts on woman’s rights. She also broke through social norms when she chose to write her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” in 1892, which described her battle with mental illness. These literary breakthroughs, made by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, help us see that the 19th century was a time of change for women.
Advocating social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men, Charlotte Perkins Gilman speaks to the “female condition” in her 1892 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by writing about the life of a woman and what caused her to lose her sanity. The narrator goes crazy due partially to her prescribed role as a woman in 1892 being severely limited. One example is her being forbidden by her husband to “work” which includes working and writing. This restricts her from begin able to express how she truly feels. While she is forbidden to work her husband on the other hand is still able to do his job as a physician. This makes the narrator inferior to her husband and males in general. The narrator is unable to be who she wants, do what she wants, and say what she wants without her husband’s permission. This causes the narrator to feel trapped and have no way out, except through the yellow wallpaper in the bedroom.
In conclusion, this story, “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, provided a great social and psychological criticism. It shows the reader how women have progressed so far in the recent years. This woman was the start of many, which finally led to making men and woman more equal, and this is the society that this woman wanted.
The term of “animal” used in Haraway’s Cyborg Theory stands for the mankind: “language, tool use, social behavior, mental events—nothing really convincingly settles the separation of human and animal. And many people no longer feel the need for such a separation” (Haraway 10). However, Gilman takes the oppression of women and applies it to the narrator’s sociological characteristics and setting to highly contrast the depletion of women as human. In short, the narrator becomes an animal; therefore, all ideas of a woman are left behind. The narrator is dehumanized: “according to Darwin, female choice was the norm in all animal species except humans. To these reformers, women’s subordinate status in patriarchal, capitalist societies stood out as “unnatural.” (Hamlin 154) As the men take hold of a woman’s identity, they also take away their humanity in order to dominate them. The beginning signs of this animalistic characterization surface when reading the setting in which the story takes place: “it is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village… for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock” (Gilman 792). Seclusion appears again even through the setting of the story. The narrator is three miles away from society, just as her prescription intended. Walls and gates are Gilman’s way of setting up the suppression that not only
"The Yellow Wallpaper" motivated the female mind of creativity and mental strength through a patriarchal order of created gender roles and male power during the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. While John represented characteristics of a typical male of his time, the yellow wallpaper represented a controlling patriarchal society; a sin of inequality that a righteous traitor needed to challenge and win. As the wallpaper deteriorates, so does the suppressing effect that male hierarchy imposed on women. Male belief in their own hierarchy was not deteriorating. Females began to think out of line, be aware of their suppression, and fight patriarchal rule. The progression of the yellow wallpaper and the narrator, through out the story, leads to a small win over John. This clearly represents and motivates the first steps of a feminist movement into the twentieth century.
The Yellow Paper is a short story published in 1892, and written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Charlotte tells of a disheartening tale of a woman who struggles to free herself from postpartum depression. The Yellow Paper gives an account of an emotionally and intellectual deteriorated woman struggles to break free from a mental prison her husband had put her into, in order to find peace. The woman lived in a male dominated society and wanted indictment from it as she had been driven crazy, because of the Victorian “rest-cure” (Gilman 45). Her husband decided to force her to have a strict bed rest by separating her from her only child. He took her to recuperate in an isolated country estate all alone. The bed rest her husband forced into made her mental state develop from bad to worst. The Yellow Paper is a story that warns the readers about the consequences of fixed gender roles in a male-dominated world. In The Yellow Paper, a woman’s role was to be a dutiful wife and she should not question her husband’s authority and even whereabouts. Whereas, a man’s role was to be a husband, main decision maker, rational thinker and his authority was not to be questioned by the wife.