Yellow Wallpaper Identity
Feminist identity is perhaps one of the most oft-discussed societal issues in the literary field. Through this issue, writers have allowed audiences to not only identify with certain female characters, but also experience firsthand the struggle said characters face when attempting to assert themselves in a misogynistic world.
Author and activist Charlotte Perkins Gilman concentrates on this struggle in her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," which chronicles an unnamed woman's gradual descent into insanity. In doing so, she shines a light on nineteenth-century gender roles as well as the conflict between women and the Victorian Era's patriarchal institutions. By using Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar as a lens through which to examine feminist …show more content…
Since his is the chief voice she hears, does the Queen try to sound like the King…or does she "talk back" to him in her own vocabulary, her own timbre, insisting on her own viewpoint? (Gilbert 46)
In asking these questions, Gilbert and Gubar categorize female writers as a subculture that, although determined to achieve the right to write about their own gender, is unable to break away from their role as dutiful wives. While the co-authors state that this inability stems from constant self-disparagement, it can also be determined that it stems from the nineteenth century's restrictive views on marriage.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman critiques these restrictions by having the narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper," complain about her husband and his treatment of her so-called illness:
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…what is one to do? So I take phosphates or phosphites – whichever it is…and am forbidden to "work" until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe the congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do? (Gilman …show more content…
The co-authors note, however, that this weapon was unable to prevent the opposite sex from continuing to implement chauvinistic social injunctions. This, in turn, redefined the Victorian female writer's ultimate goal of reinventing herself:
Unlike her male counterpart…the female artist must…struggle against the effect of a socialization which makes conflict with the will of her (male) precursors seem inexpressibly absurd, futile, or even – as in the case of the Queen in "Little Snow White" – self-annihilating…Her battle, however, is not against her (male) precursor's reading of the world but against his reading of her (Gilbert 49).
In stating the Victorian female writer's need to radically change the male-dominated community's perception of her, Gilbert and Gubar essentially claim that Victorian women expressed a desire to be understood rather than be belittled and ignored by their spouses. Gilman reveals the negative outcome of this desire, as the narrator's attempts to be understood are hindered by her husband's domineering
Author and activist Charlotte Perkins Gilman concentrates on this struggle in her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," which chronicles an unnamed woman's gradual descent into insanity. In doing so, she shines a light on nineteenth-century gender roles as well as the conflict between women and the Victorian Era's patriarchal institutions. By using Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar as a lens through which to examine feminist …show more content…
Since his is the chief voice she hears, does the Queen try to sound like the King…or does she "talk back" to him in her own vocabulary, her own timbre, insisting on her own viewpoint? (Gilbert 46)
In asking these questions, Gilbert and Gubar categorize female writers as a subculture that, although determined to achieve the right to write about their own gender, is unable to break away from their role as dutiful wives. While the co-authors state that this inability stems from constant self-disparagement, it can also be determined that it stems from the nineteenth century's restrictive views on marriage.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman critiques these restrictions by having the narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper," complain about her husband and his treatment of her so-called illness:
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…what is one to do? So I take phosphates or phosphites – whichever it is…and am forbidden to "work" until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe the congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do? (Gilman …show more content…
The co-authors note, however, that this weapon was unable to prevent the opposite sex from continuing to implement chauvinistic social injunctions. This, in turn, redefined the Victorian female writer's ultimate goal of reinventing herself:
Unlike her male counterpart…the female artist must…struggle against the effect of a socialization which makes conflict with the will of her (male) precursors seem inexpressibly absurd, futile, or even – as in the case of the Queen in "Little Snow White" – self-annihilating…Her battle, however, is not against her (male) precursor's reading of the world but against his reading of her (Gilbert 49).
In stating the Victorian female writer's need to radically change the male-dominated community's perception of her, Gilbert and Gubar essentially claim that Victorian women expressed a desire to be understood rather than be belittled and ignored by their spouses. Gilman reveals the negative outcome of this desire, as the narrator's attempts to be understood are hindered by her husband's domineering