The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman And Susan Glaspell

Life was restrictive for women in the 1800s and early 1900s. Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Susan Glaspell were two progressive women who believe in women obtaining more freedoms and rights. Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a horrifying short story about a woman steadily descending into madness from the doings of her husband. Glaspell wrote, “A Jury of Her Peers” which is a short story concerning themes of crime and justice as detectives and their wives investigate the house of a crime scene where the wife is the prime suspect. “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “A Jury of Her Peers” represents the typical oppression women faced that could lead to insanity using significant themes, symbolism, and irony; the authors wrote employing their current day
Due to the critical theme of societal expectations of gender roles in marriage, even when the narrator felt that the treatment was not helping, she is forced to obey her husband. The narrator states an opinion contrary to John, “Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do?” (648). The narrator believes that she is sick, but that doing work would be beneficial to her. She knows what she needs to start feeling better; nevertheless, if trained, knowledgeable physicians are telling her otherwise, there is not much a woman can do. They are intelligent, respected men, so the only choice she has is to follow their directions even though she knows best for herself. The beginning of the rest cure thus marks the gradual descent into madness. From the commands of her husband, who has well-meaning intentions, he confines her to a room and months of isolation with the most entertaining activity is staring at the ugly wallpaper in her prison. Void of intellectual stimulus or
The narrator eventually starts to notice a change in her psyche and becomes self-aware that she is still not feeling better; however, when she voices these opinions to her ever-loving husband, he says it is quite the contrary, “You are gaining flesh and color, your appetite is better, I feel really much easier about you” (652). John’s patronizing behavior towards his wife creates a worse situation than before because after the conversation the narrator has finally been convinced she is getting better. At this point, the narrator is wholly cut off from reality; her efforts of reasoning have been futile, so she attempts no more endeavors to prevent the madness that has steadily been creeping in. Visions she sees have escalated into full-blown delusions. She watches a woman in the wallpaper and at the end of the story rips at it an attempt to free her. The hysteria reaches its peak as readers discover that the narrator thinks she was the woman trapped in the wallpaper and is now free. The symbolism is prominent here as the woman in the wallpaper is the woman she views as