Character Analysis: The Yellow Wallpaper

Mingshi Zheng
Professor Bostick
English 2
08 May 2015
The Feminism of the Yellow Wallpaper
In the 19th century, male chauvinism was the dominant social idea in America. In the domestic environment, women had to obey to men. Women could not violate what men asked them to do and this oppressive environment had important impacts on how women perceived themselves and their roles in society. It was very unfair to all the women at that period of history. Nevertheless, with the gradual emergence of feminism, some women began to advocate the gender equality and resist the male chauvinism. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a classic feminism masterpiece. It was a story about a married woman who suffered from mental depression and
Therefore, the Yellow Wallpaper exposed the darkness of the male chauvinism, and the author tried to awaken women to seek freedom. She promoted the consciousness of independence in order to achieve women’s individual freedom for expression and choice.
First of all, Gilman presented the domestic environment as a prison for women and this oppressive environment could be embodied in the old nursery house. In the story, the narrator was arranged to move into a house in order to have the fresh air and good rest for her nerve problem. However, this big house looked very “strange” and “queer”. From the beginning, the woman felt there was “something strange about the house.”(239) When her anxiety about the place grew, she began to notice the similarly “strange yellow” of the wallpaper in her room. Therefore, although the house was supposed to be a resting place for the narrator to recover
Despite the careful arrangements of the husband in the story, the narrator was never submissive to the environment. She had rebellious ideas reflected in her body from the beginning and this idea reached its high point in the end with her confrontation with the environment. The strong sense of herself and individual position could be found in the beginning of the novel, when the narrator shared some of her opposing ideas about the rest therapy and medicine treatment from the husband and her brother. She said, “personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good.”(238) Here the narrator had some independent ideas about what was actually good for her. While the narrator was constantly forbidden to write by her husband, she still felt that “I must say what I feel and think in some way-it is such a relief!” (239) For her, keeping a note of her experiences and feelings was a great relief from the constraints from both the physical environment and the control of her husband. That was the only time she felt like being herself and being free. The final confrontation with John and the physical environment came in the end of story, when the narrator came to the psychological status of expressing aggressively. She