Preview

Feminism In The Yellow Wallpaper

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1278 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Feminism In The Yellow Wallpaper
Feminism is defined as women have the same human, and social rights as men. In other words that women should have the same opportunities and chances as men in their choices with their career, and most importantly back in the day politics.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman was written during the 19th century which was known as the time women were nothing compared to men. Women were known as the wife/ and mother of the home, nothing more, nothing less. On the other hand men were the ruler of the house, the educated ones, and the ones who work.
The book Yellow Wallpaper, is telling a story about a women struggling and going psychosis in a room. The book is happening during the time where men was known as better than women. The book uses metaphors to explain what’s being told. Charlotte
…show more content…
This could be a symbol of the discrimination that women go through, and that it can only be seen under particular circumstances, and during certain times. When the story mentioned the main character’s destroying the wallpaper and walking over her husband, it most likely symbolizes as freedom. Even when she broke the glass ceiling it can be seen as women trying their best to break free, and away from the discrimination.
There is a line in the Yellow Wallpaper that states "But I know she was studying that pattern, and I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself!" I feel like in this part of the story, it’s trying to say other people are seeing that women are trying to step up and change everything, and the women in the story is trying her best to find the best possible solution in order for men to realize women should have the same choices and rights.
During the back end of the story, John faints, this part to me feels as if the men are surprised to seeing women putting their feet down and not backing down, and is trying to end the

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Relic 12

    • 321 Words
    • 2 Pages

    This painting is one in a series to honor women and comment on their "place" in pre-revolutionary China. As courtesans and prostitutes they are elevated in the artist's hands, isolated in a field of paint, accompanied by emblems and images from classic Chinese paintings. Characters for Nu Wa, a Chinese creation goddess are painted over her groin. Nu-Wa was the inventor of marriage and made humans by slinging a rope. The hand made meant that it was noble, and made with rope stood for poor. The multiple circles around the painting means Pi in the Chinese language, which translated means universe and it’s surrounding the women in the painting. The thing that stands out the most is the red square in the middle of the painting. This means female in Chinese and makes sense since its on the women’s groin I think this painting means uniformity and creation of people. The giant butterfly in the painting can stand for multiple things such as change, joy, and love. Also can show a feminist side to the women in the painting make her look innocent.…

    • 321 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, women’s rights have remained a strong and critical topic in many areas of life. Many politicians, opinion writers, and even authors write or discuss about women’s rights in order to gain sympathy for women or to stir action towards equality. However, in the later part of the 19th century, women were treated as no more than mere objects by men, without any empathy or love. One example that explores the rights of women during the time period is Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. In her short story, Gilman depicts the hurtful relationship between a powerless wife and a husband who has no regards for his spouse. Although the wife was submissive and obedient towards her husband in the…

    • 1386 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a feminist writer who wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” in the 1890’s. During this time period the woman were expected to keep the house clean, care for their children, and listen to their husbands. The men were expected to work a job and be the head of a household. The story narrates a woman’s severe depression which she thinks is linked to the yellow wallpaper. Charlotte Gilman experienced depression in her life and it inspired her to write “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The short story is based on a woman, not given a name in the text, who is very dependent on her husband. The narrator plays a gender role that is degraded by her successful husband, who is a doctor, because she is a female. John ignores his wife’s accusations with the wallpaper and looks down on the fact that she cannot fulfill her duty as a woman, mother, or wife by treating and calling her childish names.…

    • 1580 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Despite her own personal suggestions, her husband simply dismisses the ideas, claiming he is a physician and he knows best and controls her. In the end the woman breaks through by finally tearing down the wallpaper symbolizing the woman breaking out of the gender norms into her own person. In conclusion, both stories really ask the same question: is it possible for a woman to break through the oppression of the social status and gender roles of women who are at a personal disadvantage?…

    • 1240 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    There are clues towards the ending of the story that the events following her experience with the wallpaper may have also happened previously with other women. She states, “I don’t like to look out of the windows even—there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they come out of that wallpaper as I did” which shows she might have believed the events occurred before. Thus as the story’s building up, the setting portrays her need to tear off all the wallpaper in a means to escape from her own imprisoned self and the lives of previously trapped women behind the wallpaper. After the woman tears off the wallpaper, the setting immediately changes as she liberates herself from her own illness that caused her depression since the beginning. There is no longer the yellow wallpaper and the freedom of celebration from her husband. She is now seen in control instead of her…

    • 1088 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Yellow Wallpaper is a story, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Although the work is short, it is one of the most interesting works in existence. Gilman uses literary techniques very well. The symbolism of The Yellow Wall-Paper, can be seen and employed after some thought and make sense immediately. The views and ideals of society are often found in literary works. Whether the author is trying to show the ills of society of merely telling a story, culture is woven onto the words.…

    • 1109 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper” it is clearly identifiable that men are often the superiors in a marriage and life in general. It was had for this protagonist to be respected by her husband causing her insanity to increase. She seems to represent the life women lived when this short story was written; women had a difficult time being heard and admired. It becomes a huge accomplishment when the protagonist seemingly defeats her dominating husband; she broke through the wall of superiority. At this point in time, women have come a long way from where they once stood. Now women have gained rights that men have had for multiple decades, but yet with large advancements there is still controversy over women’s rights in the world we live…

    • 1114 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The recurrent imagery of the women in the wallpaper is a strong statement about the unjust treatment of women in the late nineteenth century. The narrator realizes that she is not alone in her suffering as she doesn’t like to look out of the windows because “there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast” (Gilman 518). Normally, windows are a symbol of opportunities, but in this case the window is a symbol of reality that the narrator does not want to face. She is distressed at the thought of other women suffering as she has, and so prefers to stay creeping inside the room, away from the cruel reality of society. As the narrator tears down the wallpaper in an effort to free herself and the trapped women, she realizes that she cannot “reach far without something to stand on” (Gilman 517). This demonstrates how she cannot do much to help herself alone. Without any support from others in…

    • 895 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The most obvious conflict the narrator has to deal with is living in the room with the yellow wallpaper and differentiating creativity from reality. The narrator becomes fond of the wallpaper and feels an excessive need to figure out the pattern. She says, “I know a little of the principle of design, and I know this thing was not arranged on any laws of radiation, or alternation, or repetition, or symmetry, or anything else that I have ever heard of” (Gilman 224). Her days become preoccupied with the wallpaper and she feels a distinct connection to it. While she tries to decode the wallpaper’s pattern, her creativity allows her to see a face in the wallpaper. She says, “There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (Gilman 223). As she continues to study the wallpaper, she comes to believe that she sees a woman creeping in the chaotic wallpaper who is trapped behind it: “The front pattern does- and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it!” (Gilman 227). She begins to have a bond with this woman and can relate to her. The woman in the wallpaper is essentially the narrator. They are similar in the sense that they are both trapped and unable to escape. Towards the end of the story, the narrator reaches a state of insanity where she can no longer differentiate herself from the figure she sees in the wallpaper. She tells us, “I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is…

    • 1469 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Feminism in its definition according to Barbara Smith in This Bridge Called My Back (1981) means; "Feminism is the political theory and practice to free all women: women of color, working-class women, poor women, physically challenged women, lesbians, old women as well as white economically privileged heterosexual women. Anything less than this is not…

    • 1255 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The chief symbol in the story The Yellow Wallpaper was the gender roles. Women were oppressed not only by their husbands but also by other male figures. During the 1800s, men had the attempt to have a mental screen to place over women, which the yellow wallpaper itself symbolizes. The color yellow is often associated with sickness or weakness, and the writer’s mysterious illness is a symbol of man’s oppression of the female sex. The two windows, representing the probable equality of women by men, from which the narrator often looks out of to observe a world apart form her own. Thus symbolizing the entrapment the narrator roughly endorses through out her nervous depression in the story.…

    • 661 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Although the story is attentively placed on the descriptions of the yellow wallpaper and her psychosis, many subliminal messages are plausible as well. Lori Voth, also states “It is important, though, to understand that although the plot is primarily based around her neurosis, the objective of the story is to deliver a completely unrelated message”. One could conclude that gender stereotypes are permeated within this short story as well. I was remarkably intrigued by the feminist theories illustrated in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. William Ames describes feminism, “based on the assumption that women have the same human, political and social rights as men, furthermore, that women should have the same opportunities as men in their personal choices regarding careers, politics and expression”. The suppressing of women’s liberation by male figures is the more common stereotype inside the story. The idea of dependency for man, due to the self-indulgent mindset of woman really stood out to me in this story as well. The narrator is merely viewed as hysterical because of her thoughts, and she relies on her husband’s knowledge to treat her although she doesn’t progress with his knowledge.…

    • 1018 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    On my first reading of Charlotte Perkins Gilman 's "The Yellow Wallpaper", I found the short story extremely well done and the author, successful at getting her idea across. Gilman 's use of imagery and symbolism only adds to the reality of the nameless main character 's sheltered life and slow progression into insanity or some might say, out of insanity.…

    • 756 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a riveting story of a dejected woman locked away due to the instability of her mind. Our unnamed protagonist is a passionate writer and it is only through her writing that we are able to follow her on a journey where she becomes a victim to those around her including herself. Her writing also reveals the gradual development of her madness. The significance of the story is tremendous as it uses insanity to delve into the underlying issues of "a woman's place" and feminism, or the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of sexual equality, in the 19th century.…

    • 1728 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    At a time where women had little say in how to live their own lives, increasingly more female novelists began to write about gender roles with a critical outlook on the patriarchal structure in society. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is one example of a feminist social criticism from the late 1800’s. In this short story, the female protagonist is prohibited to do what she wants to do and instead is forced by her husband to rest alone in a room to cure her of her postnatal depression, thus ironically becoming more ill and hallucinative.…

    • 813 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays