Examples Of Allegory In The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman brilliantly creates a haunting and gothic allegory in her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Gilman takes her audience through her unnamed character’s journey of emotional deterioration. The author’s allegory for the suffrage of women as a whole is perceived through her female protagonist with marital submission, oppression, and the evils of the resting-cure. This story is a classic example of complete authority of men over their women in that particular time period in which the story takes place. The reader first sees the narrator as a subject to the conditions of a patriarchal society when she is describing the male-dominant figure in her life, John. She has been imprisoned by her husband as she suffers from a nervous condition. In her writing she explains that possibly because of John being a physician she is not getting well (313). John does not see the intensity of her sickness and …show more content…
For instance, “The floor is scratched and gouged and splintered, the plaster itself is dug out here and there, and this great heavy bed which is all we found in the room, looks as if it had been through wars” (315). The marks in the bed posts, scratched floors, and the haunting wallpaper contribute to the room containing evidence of past horrors. The room itself oppresses her. At the time, it was discouraged of women to write in the fear of revolt and a woman creating herself an identity. “There comes John, and I must put this away, - he hates to have me write a word” (314). She clearly shows freedom is nonexistent in their relationship. The protagonist uses an outlet of writing as redemption. She is unable to pull herself out of her condition, adding to the oppression. As the reader, we travel through the foul decay of her emotional state as she is driven to insanity under the resting-cure. We see how women’s medical and psychological conditions were misunderstood in that time