Feminism in “The Yellow Wallpaper"

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“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story by American author Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 at the New England press. It is considered as an important first study of American feminist writing, because of its example of the attitudes towards psychological and physical well-being of women in the nineteenth century. Narrated in the first person, this story is a collection of diary entries written by a woman whose physician partner (John) has rented the ancient house for this season.

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Forgoing different areas at the home, the family goes into the upstairs nursery. As the kind of care, this unknown female is prohibited from running, and is encouraged to eat easily and take plenty of gas, so she will recover from what he calls a “temporary nervous depression a slight hysterical tendency”, a diagnosis common to women during that period. The readers wonder if Dr. Weir Mitchell or John are the villians to the narrator. Dr. Weir Mitchell thought the “resting cure” was helpful to Gillman.

In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the vivid symbolic points create an underlying and atmosphere of insanity, all of which drive the two major themes of this celebrated short story.

The first simility of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the main character undergoes psychological unhappiness. In her attempts to get the solutions to this problem, she goes with her pain because he pushes to be in the specific area that she does not want. “There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will” (Gilman).

He denies her indepences by forcing her to be in the room without getting out. In this “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the main character, also the woman is in search of indepence and remains in the way entirely. ‘Gilman wrote the piece based on herself and what she went through’(Juliann Fleenor). She needs to be separated from her husband for her to live her personal life. “No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long” (Gilman). Yet, she denied independent within the period she wants it a lot. ‘Gilman was imprisoned behind the paper begin to permeate- that is, to haunt her life’ (Gilbert). Therefore, her assertion of independence causes her to die of a heart failure.

To continue, she stayed with the yellow wallpaper in this way she was nothing to do but to study the wallpaper. She starts to smell the wallpaper and calls it to take the “yellow smell”. She begins to find the example of woman trapped in the wallpaper. “She then attempts to take this trapped female from the wallpaper” (Charlotte Perkins Gilman). Gilman had a comparatively similar time history to the life of the narrator at “The Yellow Wallpaper”. She was ordered the one “rest cure” as the narrator that later led to the psychological breakdown. The prescribed “part cure” implies minimal human touch, suppressed creativity, and female restraint. The color yellow is associated with illness being vulnerable. Sometimes yellow is linked also with the female’s oppression by someone “The color is repellant, most revolting; the smouldering unclean yellow, oddly faded by the slow-turning sun. It is the boing yet shocking orange in some spots, a sickly sulphur color in others” (Perkins) The wallpaper grows the character’s enemy and close friend. This character stays obsessed with the yellow wallpaper until this point why she sets it free. This wallpaper reflects the character’s perceptions and emotions, but most of all the pain she is suffering. The staind yellow dresses relate to the character from creeping within the night.

Next, symbol and expression in The Yellow Wallpaper is as a fantastic representative of this medieval horror style. It was not until the discovery of the news in the past 1970’s that the wallpaper was acknowledged as the movement indictment of the male dominated country. Social Repression at the yellow wallpaper “The Yellow Wallpaper is the symbolic story of one female’s attempt to break free from he psychological situation” (Charlotte Perkins Gilman). Gilman shows the audience how quick insanity gets hold when the person is brought out of circumstance and totally separated from the rest of the world. The narrator is a depressed woman who will not control being lonely and retreats into her personal illusions as opposed to admitting her world. The psychological situation is a symbol for the current oppression of women’s rights in society and we see the results when the woman attempts to free herself from the cultural slavery. “The bars on the window, the bed being nailed down, grooves in the floor, torn wallpaper, and a gate at the top of the stairs” (SparkNotes). Represents the symbols of the story and Gilman thinks she is in a attic. The wallpaper develops symbolism throughout the story.

Finally, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the short story of a mad woman, with information of the structure, weather, smell, and objects in the history providing for an efficient experience of the story. Together with Charlotte Gilman’s sophisticated diction environment is used as an effective reflection of the intended air. The character represents the result of the persecution of females at society at the Nineteenth Century. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the writer discovers the narrator is torn between hatred and passion, but feeling is difficult to define. These results are created by the use of complex ideas used in this narrative, which aided her oppression and reflected to her self-expression.

To conclude, in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the vivid symbolic points create an underlying and atmosphere of insanity, all of which drive the two major themes of this celebrated short story. Forgoing different areas at the home, the family goes into the upstairs nursery. As the kind of care, this unknown female is prohibited from running, and is encouraged to eat easily and take plenty of gas, so she will recover from what he calls a “temporary nervous depression a slight hysterical tendency”, a diagnosis common to women during that period. The readers wonder if Dr. Weir Mitchell or John are the villians to the narrator. Dr. Weir Mitchell thought the “resting cure” was helpful to Gillman. It is considered as an important first study of American feminist writing, because of its example of the attitudes towards psychological and physical well-being of women in the nineteenth century. Narrated in the first person, this story is a collection of diary entries written by a woman whose physician partner (John) has rented the ancient house for this season. Jennie and John see how obsessed she is over the wallpaper, they take piece by piece down, and they are aware she is trapped in the wallpaper.