Power and Gender Roles
During the early 19th century and prior, women were hyper-sexualized as mediocre and suppressed by the male population. Men demanded authority by defining female roles and responsibilities in society. Although all women of time paid the price for male egotistical behaviors, mainly the middle and sometimes upper class were affected. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s critically acclaimed story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, first published in the New England Magazine, in January 1892, is a narrative study of Gilman's own nervousness (Smith). The story analyzes the injustices women faced at the hands of their husbands. The main character is diagnosed with postpartum depression, a type of depression that develops in some women after birthing a baby; and she is put on the resting cure for the summer. Gilman, like the narrator of her story, sought medical help from the famous neurologist, Dr. Weir Mitchell but receive no useful help. Gilman writes of the woman trapped by her husband’s commands when he locks her in a room, forbidden to raise her children because of her “extreme condition” (Gilman 792). The unnamed protagonist remains locked in the room upstairs for weeks, progressively getting worse because she is forced to take prescribed medicine every hour of each day (Gilman 794). She begins to scrutinize the aging and repulsive yellow wallpaper of her room and grows clinically insane as each day passes way. Gilman uses this story to critique the position of women within the institution of marriage, especially as practiced by the respectable classes of the period.
Throughout the era in which “The Yellow Wallpaper” was first published, readers were overwhelmed by Gilman’s descriptive writing style, even adding it to the lis...
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...orever continue but male suppression has dramatically declined over time. Charlotte Gilman, among other female writers, poets, and artists of the time deserve a commemoration because their works have greatly contributed to the rise of women’s strength and power. Soon, equality will prevail, and there shall truly be justice for all.
Works Cited
Gilbert, Kelly. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman “The Yellow Wallpaper"" Gilman, "Yellow Wallpaper" Florida Gulf Coast University, 27 July 1998. Web. 30 Nov. 2013.
Gilman, Charlotte P. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Nina Baym and Robert S. Levine. Eight ed. Vol. C. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2012. 790-804. Print.
Smith, Pat. "Freeing the Woman behind the Wallpaper: The Symbolic Meaning of the Yellow Wallpaper." Bergen Community College Homepage. Bergen, 15 Nov. 2006. Web. 30 Nov. 2013.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "Why I Wrote 'The Yellow Wallpaper'" Ed. Catherine Lavender; The College of Staten Island of the City University of New York, Fall Semester, Oct. 1997. (25 Jan 1999) http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/whyyw.html
Gilman, Charlotte P. "The Yellow Wall-paper." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. 7th ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008. 1682-695. Print.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper" and other Stories. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1997.
Kessler, Carol Parley. "Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1860 -1935." Modem American Women Writers. Ed. Elaine Showalter, et al. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1991. 155 -169.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Booth, Alison and Kelly J. Mays, eds. The Norton Introduction to Literature. 10th ed. New York: Norton, 2010. 354-65. Print.
Thomas, Deborah. The Changing Role of Womanhood: From True Woman to New Woman in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper". July 27, 1998. http://itech.fgcu.edu/faculty/wohlpart/alra/gilman.htm (accessed January 27, 2014).
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, "The Yellow Wallpaper" The Heath Anthology of American Literature, Second Edition. Gen. Ed. Paul Lauter. D. C. Heath and Co., Lexington, MA: 1994.
In the late nineteenth century when the Yellow Wallpaper was written, the role of wife and mother, which women were expected to adopt, often led to depression or a so-called "hysteria". Women of this period were living in a patriarchal society where they were expected to be demure and passive, supportive yet unquestioning of their husbands, and good mothers to their husband's children. The conflict for women in the society thus became a question of how to be all of these things while still conserving herself as a person and most importantly, conserving her sanity (Wagner-Martin 51). In this Victorian society "the boredom and confinement of affluent women fostered a morbid cult of hypochondria - 'female invalidism'"- where it became popular and even appropriate for women to fall into bed at the slightest provocation with a "sick headache" or "nerves" (Ehrenreich 92-93). Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of the Yellow Wallpaper (among other things), said of this phenomenon that "American men 'have bred a race of women weak enough to be handled as invalids; or mentally weak enough to pretend that they are-and like it.'" (93).
Gilman, Charlotte. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Literature a World of Writing: Stories, Poems, Plays, and Essays. Ed. David Pike, and Ana Acosta. New York: Longman, 2011. 543-51. Print.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper?" The Yellow Wallpaper. Ed. Dale M. Bauer. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1998. 348-349.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories. Mineola: Dover, 1997. Print.
Gilman Perkins, Charlotte. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The Language of Literature: American Literature Evanston: McDougall, Littell. 2002. 765-768
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wall-paper.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2013.1669-1681. Print.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." 1892. The New England Magazine. Reprinted in "Lives & Moments - An Introduction to Short Fiction" by Hans Ostrom. Hold, Orlando, FL
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." 1892. The New England Magazine. Reprinted in "Lives & Moments - An Introduction to Short Fiction" by Hans Ostrom. Hold, Orlando, FL 1991.