Analysis Of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

When reading The Yellow Wallpaper, one can notice that women’s issues were not taken seriously at all. Additionally, incorporating the lack of seriousness taken for mental health into the equation allowed for the oppression of women to be even more worrying. When writing this eerie short story, Charlotte Perkins Gilman used many different techniques that added layers to to make her messages evident to the readers. The imagery of the room brought to life the oppression weighing down on her and the loss of self. The lack of name for the narrator allows the story to become a representation of the women of that time and not just of one woman as an anomaly. Throughout the story, the oppression of the narrator was very evident and her exclusion from …show more content…
Gillman’s use of childlike names led to the belittlement of the narrator as a person by her husband which added to the stifled feeling that the narrator felt. Childlike names created a power hierarchy within their relationship and in a time where women had little power it made her feel more like she didn’t matter and less like she had equal standing with her husband and even her sister-in-law. In addition to treating the narrator as a child, Gilman made the choice of emphasizing on the ignorance in her medical condition by those surrounding her. This occurs throughout the story. Not only does her husband decline her cry for help, but so does her brother. They brushed it off as something that will get better with time, as if she had the power in her hands to get better; when in reality, she has no control over her life. Being a woman, and on top of that having such an illness, makes her susceptible to not having any control over her own life, which is accurate in this case. Her brother and husband decide what exactly she needs to get better merely because she is a woman. They would know what she needs because what more could a woman need to