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Feminist analysis yellow wallpaper
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Charlotte Perkins Gilman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” explores gender roles that hint at the complications of this short story. “John laughs at me, of course” shows the insight into a largely known problem in human societies and relationships. The fictional short story shows the chilling nonfictional concerns of gender subordination in present times. One is shown in a series of events the challenges of a woman, the narrator, living in a male dominated society. Society is composed of the powerful and the weak, an asset to a gender dominated society one lives in.
John and the narrator’s brother are both high standing physicians in their current residency that requires them to make a lot of informed decisions, regarding medicine. In this story line, the occupation of John and her brother causes them to misuse their medical authority on John’s wife. This woman has post partum depression and tells her husband she does not feel good. John abuses his powers by not trusting her and diagnosis her with “temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency.” She does not question her husband’s decision making since her opinion seems weaker than his. The female gender suffers a loss of confidence when realizing the dominant level of the respectable male gender in one’s life. The narrator tries to confront John but “it is so hard to talk to John about my case, because he is so wise.” This quotation shows how scared she is of her own husband and she does not want to upset him. The powerful dominant gender role her husband plays over his ill wife causes her to suffer complete loss of confidence, where she dares not speak to him for the rest of the night. The confrontation displayed between John lessons the narrators self worth and ma...
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...ship is doomed. As time passes, John’s wife’s insanity spirals downwards into self-reflecting hallucinations of her own true being and desire of freedom. Her passion to tear down the wallpaper is metaphorically representing herself to break free of this male dominated relationship and shed free of the social standard regarding the disrespect and lack of equality within her marriage. As she expresses herself by ripping the paper from the wall, she is free and no longer under control.
Works Cited
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” In An Introduction to Literature, by Sylvan Barnet, William Burto and William E. Cain, 419-430. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006.
Lanser, Susan S. "Feminist Criticism and The Politics of Color in America." Feminist Studies, 2011: 415-441.
Oakley, Ann. "Beyond The Yellow Wallpaper." Reproductive Health Matters, 2011: 30-39.
In Charlotte Gillman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator describes several attitudes in which men thought about women and the overall oppression of women in the early 20th century. The perception of men and women encouraged society to place limitations on women and allow men to dominate. Women were seen as caretakers, homebodies and fragile, unable to care for one’s self. This is symbolic to the “Cult of Domesticity”, a term identifying a nineteenth-century ideology that women's nature suited them especially for tasks associated with the home. It identified four characteristics that were supposedly central to women's identity: piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness.” One the other hand, men would rule society through their work, politics, and government. They were able to live free and enjoy the public sphere where men enjoyed the competition created in the marketplace through which they gained their identity. In the public sphere, they made decisions that enhanced their own positions in society, while exploiting women’s biological makeup and employing blackmail to render women immobile.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Norton Introduction To Literature. Eds. Jerome Beaty and J. Paul Hunter. 7th Ed. New York, Norton, 1998. 2: 630-642.
To begin with, the narrator husband name is John, who shows male dominance early in the story as he picked the house they stayed in and the room he kept his wife in, even though his wife felt uneasy about the house. He is also her doctor and orders her to do nothing but rest; thinking she is just fine. John is the antagonist because he is trying to control
For decades now critics have viewed, Gilman’s novella, “The Yellow Wallpaper” mainly in a feminist way, focusing on the way women acted and how they were treated in the 1800s. Although there are good points to the feminist criticism, one could go more in depth by psychoanalyzing it because feminism fit more into the 1800s when women did not have the roles they have today, by looking at the psychoanalytic effect the restrictions had on her, and observing the effects the room had on her.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper." 1892. The Norton Anthology of Short Fiction. 7th ed. Eds. Richard Bausch and R. V. Cassill. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2006. 598-608.
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.
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. "The Yellow Wallpaper." The Norton Anthology of American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2007. 1684-1695.
Prior to the early twentieth century men dictated women’s role in society. Charlotte Gilman uses her novella “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) as a symbolic reflection of oppression of women in a paternalistic society. Her novella challenges the idea of women being depicted as weak and fragile.
This story demonstrates a prime example of a patriarchal society in which the degree of influence by Dr. John in the decisions of the marriage, which ends up in his wife’s dementia. In the story right after Jane gave birth to her child she gets into a deep depression so her husband and her brother, two respected physicians ordered her rest. The house where they live is away from town and she only had contact with her husband and her nurse. "[The house] is quite alone standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people." Gilman, Charlotte
Kennedy, X. J., and Dana Gioia. "The Yellow Wallpaper." Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. 2011. Print.
Traditionally, men have held the power in society. Women have been treated as a second class of citizens with neither the legal rights nor the respect of their male counterparts. Culture has contributed to these gender roles by conditioning women to accept their subordinate status while encouraging young men to lead and control. Feminist criticism contends that literature either supports society’s patriarchal structure or provides social criticism in order to change this hierarchy. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts one women’s struggle against the traditional female role into which society attempts to force her and the societal reaction to this act.
Gender roles seem to be as old as time and have undergone constant, but sometime subtle, revisions throughout generations. Gender roles can be defined as the expectations for the behaviors, duties and attitudes of male and female members of a society, by that society. The story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” is a great example of this. There are clear divisions between genders. The story takes place in the late nineteenth century where a rigid distinction between the domestic role of women and the active working role of men exists (“Sparknotes”). The protagonist and female antagonists of the story exemplify the women of their time; trapped in a submissive, controlled, and isolated domestic sphere, where they are treated as fragile and unstable children while the men dominate the public working sphere.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator and her husband John can be seen as strong representations of the effects society’s stereotypical gender roles as the dominant male and submissive female have within a marriage. Because John’s wife takes on the role as the submissive female, John essentially controlled all aspects of his wife’s life, resulting in the failure of the couple to properly communicate and understand each other. The story is intended to revolve around late 19th century America, however it still occurs today. Most marriages still follow the traditional gender stereotypes, potentially resulting in a majority of couples to uphold an unhealthy relationship or file for divorce. By comparing the “The yellow wallpaper” with the article “Eroticizing Inequality in the United States: The Consequences and Determinants of Traditional Gender Role Adherence in Intimate Relationships”, the similarities between the 19th century and 21st century marriage injustice can further be examined. If more couples were able to separate the power between the male and female, America would have less unhappy marriages and divorces.
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. "The Yellow Wallpaper" The Harbrace Anthology of Literature. Ed. Jon C. Scott, Raymond E. Jones, and Rick Bowers. Canada: Nelson Thomas Learning, 2002. 902-913.