The Yellow Wallpaper: The Women's Rights Movement?

Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written at a very controversial time period: the women’s rights movement. While this book serves as a predominant feminist text, it clearly outlines the voices of changing ideals. As written by literary analyst Jurgen Wolter in ““The Yellow Wallpaper” The Ambivalence of Changing Discourses,” the text has been “approached from various other perspectives, ranging from biographical, deconstructive, reader's response, genre studies.” In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” there are three main points of discussion: gender roles of society at the time, symbolism of the wallpaper, and the results of the changing values. All of these factors contribute to the actions of the character and the changes that she experiences. “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written at a time called the Late Victorian era, a time of reformation and change. It is at this time that women’s rights activist Elizabeth Stanton met at the Seneca Falls convention. This idea of women having more freedom and less confinement of home started to spread. Opponents of this movement claimed that women having these “abnormal” ideas were mentally insane. That is why some claim that “The Yellow
The analysis of Jurgen Wolter clearly states: “Yellow and decadence were almost synonymous in the public and aesthetic discourse at the turn of the century.” The color yellow in the story is not a good yellow: it represents decay and death. It was the speaker’s husband (John) that put the narrator into a room where “the color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow.” John obviously knows he put her there and for what reason: to slowly drain the life out of her. To the narrator the yellow represents society and its cruel views on equality. That is the very reason why at the end, the narrator decides to tear the wallpaper down, to defy society and its ridiculous