“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a seminal short story in feminist writing. Published in 1892, it was extremely ahead of its time. At a time when a woman could be sentenced to the insane asylum for something as simple and objective as not listening to her husband/father or being “rebellious”, Gilman spoke out against the unfair treatments prescribed for so-called “hysteria.” Gilman knew from experience that suppressing creativity was harmful, not helpful. “The Yellow Wallpaper” can be looked at through the lenses of feminist criticism, new criticism, and biographical criticism.
Feminist criticism, also known as gender criticism, is defined as the way that literature and other media enforces or undermines political, social, …show more content…
“The Yellow Wallpaper” gets much of its drama and theme, that of the suppression of a creative mind leading to insanity, from its setting. Setting in a work is defined as the location, environment, or surrounding in which a work takes place. The bulk of this story takes place in a room that induces contempt and craziness from the protagonist. It is clear that feminist views of the story are accentuated and improved upon through Jane’s surroundings. Her atmosphere is life like in a prison; all Jane really wants is for the walls to be re-papered, but her husband refuses. He states “that after the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on” (Gilman, 2004). Though Jane feels repressed by these bars, these gates, this wallpaper, John refuses to change the environment for her; he wants her imprisoned and institutionalized. The most obvious use, perhaps, of the setting to highlight feminist views comes in the wallpaper: “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars!” (Gilman, 2004). The paper, though not restraining her physically, like bars and gates on the windows, shows us a psychological prison. It “gradually consumes the narrators being” (Feminist Gothic in The Yellow Wallpaper). Her thoughts are married and devoted to the paper; she’s enamored by it, captivated, completely unable to pull her mind from the magnetism of the pattern. It connects, all of it, to the woman trapped in the paper, and the protagonist cannot free her mind until the end, when she removes the paper, and, by extension, the prison on her
Feminist criticism, also known as gender criticism, is defined as the way that literature and other media enforces or undermines political, social, …show more content…
“The Yellow Wallpaper” gets much of its drama and theme, that of the suppression of a creative mind leading to insanity, from its setting. Setting in a work is defined as the location, environment, or surrounding in which a work takes place. The bulk of this story takes place in a room that induces contempt and craziness from the protagonist. It is clear that feminist views of the story are accentuated and improved upon through Jane’s surroundings. Her atmosphere is life like in a prison; all Jane really wants is for the walls to be re-papered, but her husband refuses. He states “that after the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on” (Gilman, 2004). Though Jane feels repressed by these bars, these gates, this wallpaper, John refuses to change the environment for her; he wants her imprisoned and institutionalized. The most obvious use, perhaps, of the setting to highlight feminist views comes in the wallpaper: “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars!” (Gilman, 2004). The paper, though not restraining her physically, like bars and gates on the windows, shows us a psychological prison. It “gradually consumes the narrators being” (Feminist Gothic in The Yellow Wallpaper). Her thoughts are married and devoted to the paper; she’s enamored by it, captivated, completely unable to pull her mind from the magnetism of the pattern. It connects, all of it, to the woman trapped in the paper, and the protagonist cannot free her mind until the end, when she removes the paper, and, by extension, the prison on her