Marxist criticism

Richard Lopez
Dr. Dibakar Barua
English 110
13 March 2014
Women of the Past: A Feminist Critique Patriarchal ideals and gender roles keep women from being completely free. Throughout history, women have been labeled and stereotyped as being less capable than men. This caused them to continuously doubt their own capabilities compared to men’s. Society has not presented them with the same opportunities, nor treated them as fairly. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, she portrays patriarchal ideals through the mentally ill, female protagonist’s thoughts and writing, John’s attitude towards his wife’s requests, and the prison-like estate she is confined to. The narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” is diagnosed with temporary nervous depression by her husband John, who is a doctor. He says that all she needs to do to get better is rest. The narrator doesn’t agree with him: “Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do?” (1). Since she lives in a time when patriarchal ideals were present, she had no choice, but to put her trust in her husband because he “knew best”. He is a doctor after all, and she was in no position to question him even though she knew exactly what would make her feel better, which was to write and live a more exciting life. Most women of patriarchal times accepted the idea that they will never be better than they are, and are okay with it. When her husband’s sister arrives, the narrator tells us, “She is a perfect and enthusiastic housekeeper, and hopes for no better profession. I verily believe she thinks it is the writing which made me sick!” (4). The narrator is a different woman than most. The husband’s sister has the same ideals as John. She sees herself below men and believes in gender roles. Gilman shows that it is rare for a woman of that time to have a sense of feminist critique, more commonly accepting that she is less than a man. The narrator’s husband, John, is a doctor and a typical male of his time. The narrator explains:
John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage. John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures. John is a physician, and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind)—perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster. (1)

He believes that he is always right in every situation over his wife, which is very ordinary of a husband during patriarchal times. When she gives her opinion about something, he laughs at her, hinting that he considers it invalid because she is a woman and he is a man. John does not mean harm of his beliefs, but in his mind, he always knows what is best for his wife, especially because he is a big shot doctor. Although John is not the protagonist of the story, he is, in some sense, the central figure. Unlike the narrator, he is given a name, and is a big time doctor, which makes him superior over his wife, portraying patriarchal ideals. Throughout the story, everything that happens to the narrator is a result of the husband’s decisions. She is not allowed to write, is confined to a room she hates, and is forced to look at the ugly, yellow wallpaper all day because her husband has the final say in all the aspects of her life. The woman’s life in this story revolves around the man’s, further depicting patriarchal ideals. When narrator and her husband arrive at the estate, she is basically imprisoned to a single room in the giant house. The room seems to be similar to a prison. The wallpaper is ugly, the windows have bars on them, and it drives the narrator completely insane. Inside the wallpaper, she sees a woman that is trapped and she makes it her duty to free her: “As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her.
I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper. A strip about as high as my head and half around the room. And then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at me, I declared I would finish it to-day! (7)

When she rips the wallpaper off of the wall, it is clear that she is not freeing a random woman, but freeing herself from the imprisonment that he husband has doomed her to. The room that she is forced to stay in represents a woman’s confinement to a household, while a man is free to go where and do what he pleases, regarding patriarchal ideals. The message that “The Yellow Wallpaper” is sending is quite clear. Patriarchal ideals were all too common in Gilman’s time, and it drove the narrator absolutely mad. Gilman portrays common patriarchal ideals in her story by showing that the narrator’s opinions do not matter, revolving the story around her husband, and using the room that the narrator is confined to as an example of common women trapped in their own homes during patriarchal times. In the author’s head, she believes that men and women must be held at an equal standard in order for women to live happily.