Yellow Wallpaper Thesis

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In the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper", Charlotte Perkins Gilman creates an illustration through the narrator of the unequal relationship between men and women. Gilman uses the narrator to portray the role of the wife as a second-class citizen, someone who is urged to avoid expression outside of her gender role. The narrator is cut off from creative intellectual pursuits, along with all other "fancy" thoughts that do not directly contribute to her domestication. These types of societal standards impose feelings of anxiety, inferiority and can often lead to depression.
The narrator begins her journal or diary by explaining the setting of which she will spend the rest of her summer. She describes it as a colonial mansion, something she says, "...is very seldom that mere ordinary people like John and myself secure ancestral halls for the summer" (Gilman 230). This admittance, as well as John's position as a physician imply that the couple belong to the upper-middle class. While normally not especially important, this social status allows the character to remain alone for much of the story, as she is able to hire someone else to take care of her domestic duties. In the following sentences, she continues to make reference to her marriage and her affections for …show more content…

It is his advice that she refrain from active work and writing. Throughout the story, he belittles her beliefs that writing, excitement, discovery and other forms of congenial work could keep her anxieties and fears at rest. She is given no choice but to hide her writing from him, often tucking it away moments before he reappears. As the summer continues, the narrator's nervous affliction worsens. She is tormented by a woman barred behind the layers of the yellow wallpaper. This fictionalized woman is a device used by the author to illustrate the subservience of women and the fragility of the subconscious

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