What Makes A Woman's Struggle For Freedom In The Yellow Wallpaper
In the early- to mid-nineteenth century, domestic ideology placed American middle class women as a spiritual and moral leaders within their homes. These principals suggested, a woman's place was within the private province of the home, where the woman would carry out her prescribed role(s) as a wife and mother. Men, on the other hand, would predominantly rule the public realm through work, politics, and economics. In "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Gilman, the narrator and John, her husband, rent a colonial mansion for the summer. The narrator feels uncomfortable in the mansion, but obeys her husband’s decision to stay. The narrator also submits to John when he chooses a large, airy room (nursery) on the top floor instead of the smaller,
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The narrator is a young wife and mother who has newly began to struggle with symptoms of depression and anxiety. Although she does not consider anything to be wrong with her, her physician husband, diagnoses her with neurasthenia and recommends numerous months of S. Weir Mitchell’s famed “rest cure.” In addition to being limited to the nursery in their rented summer home, the narrator is specifically forbidden to write or engage in any creative activity. The narrator firmly believes being able to engage in such activities may be the best solution to improving her state of mind, as stated, “I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me." (). The narrator is stuck between wanting to please her husband, adopt her role as a wife and mother and her longing to express herself creatively. She begins to secretly write without her husband’s permission or knowing, “There comes John, and I must put this away-he hates to have me write a word” (). This is the first occurrence the narrator demonstrates signs of some independence and disobedience. As the story further unfolds, the narrator begins to find comfort in the “hideous wallpaper” that covers the walls in her room of confinement. She progressively begins to see a female imprisoned behind the bar-like pattern of the
The narrator is a young wife and mother who has newly began to struggle with symptoms of depression and anxiety. Although she does not consider anything to be wrong with her, her physician husband, diagnoses her with neurasthenia and recommends numerous months of S. Weir Mitchell’s famed “rest cure.” In addition to being limited to the nursery in their rented summer home, the narrator is specifically forbidden to write or engage in any creative activity. The narrator firmly believes being able to engage in such activities may be the best solution to improving her state of mind, as stated, “I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me." (). The narrator is stuck between wanting to please her husband, adopt her role as a wife and mother and her longing to express herself creatively. She begins to secretly write without her husband’s permission or knowing, “There comes John, and I must put this away-he hates to have me write a word” (). This is the first occurrence the narrator demonstrates signs of some independence and disobedience. As the story further unfolds, the narrator begins to find comfort in the “hideous wallpaper” that covers the walls in her room of confinement. She progressively begins to see a female imprisoned behind the bar-like pattern of the