Yellow Wallpaper Thesis

Often times throughout literary works, authors will use their work to express their passion on important topics or to enlighten the reader more about those topics. Author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman does this within her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Throughout Gilman’s time, she was a leading figure in the women’s movement during the turn of the 20th century. Gilman used her work as a chance to use her voice to challenge the important topics that happened among that era, including conventional gender roles. She also used her own troubles that she faced in her personal life to inspire her short stories. The one short story that relates the most to Gilman’s life is “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Gilman used the troubles in her life to portray the
Gilman used her chance as a writer to critique the role of a married women. Turning this issue into a theme found within “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Gilman challenged the subordination of women in marriage with the narrator’s relationship with her husband John, who also happens to be her physician. Though her husband is careful and loving to her, he misjudges her thoughts and dominates over her because of his status of being her physician: “You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do? If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression-a slight hysteria tendency-what is one to do?” (Gilman 238). The narrator has no voice for herself, she is trapped and unhappy under what her husband says: “John says if I don’t pick up faster he shall send me to Weir Michell in the fall. But I don’t want to go there at all…”(Gilman 242). The narrator had no one to believe in her and no one to stand up for her; she can’t even stand up for herself, because of the reputation behind having