Theme Of Oppression In The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins

Contribution of Oppression To Charlottes Mental Distress Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in the “The Yellow Wallpaper” uses an unusual writing style for her journal-like story; as a result revealing her gradual mental breakdown throughout the story. The excessive usage of “and” and dashes implies withheld information and shows lack of coherency between her sentences and thoughts while the use of exclamation mark shows her nervous excitement. Although, John fails to understand his wife, both as a physician and more importantly as her husband, the narrator, as his wife understands John quite well. Male dominance and stereotypical gender roles are shown in this story through the treatment of women’s opinions as a minor and their …show more content…
The style of the short story gives us an insight into the writer’s personality and voice. She starts writing about the haunted house and how she believes that there’s something odd about the house, and continues to assert what she thinks about the house in the passage; however, her husband does not agree. “John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.” She has her own viewpoint but the way she writes illustrates how her opinions are supressed by John’s interference with her thoughts. The haunted mansion start of the short story conveys how gothic the story is as a whole, which symbolizes decay of her mental state of mind as she starts to identify herself as the woman in the wallpaper, “I wonder if they all come …show more content…
The usage of exclamation marks and the construction of the paragraphs throughout the story adheres to our conclusion about her mental state, approaching the end of the story her style changes to a degree where it is identifiable that she is going through a mental crisis. The first passage of this story reflects on the story as a whole, because of the gothic elements in the passage such as the haunted house and the conflicts in opinions between the narrator and John, the conflicts in opinions are seen throughout the story. This passage presents that John has a large impact on the narrator’s life, it also presents that John is her main concern because of the reinforcement of the treatment on her. In every part of the story the narrator tries to convince that physical and mental activity helps her with the mental condition rather than isolation and inactivity. John neglects his wife’s desires as a husband and he was unsuccessful in providing her with the best treatment as a physician, therefore, he fails in both roles which shows the gender stereotypical roles, were the woman obeys her husband even if she knows what’s best for her more than anyone