Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a feminist, suffragist, and writer. She had views that middle class women were enslaved by “masculisnist” ideas of domesticity. (Perkins, 64) After experiencing what could be described today as post partum depression, she sought the help of a prominent doctor named S. Weir Mitchell. His treatment was the norm for those days, which called for no intellectual stimulation, lots of food, and complete rest (Perkins, 62). With that treatment it was no surprise that a woman such as herself was driven to near madness. The great thing that came out of that experience was Charlotte writing “The Yellow Wallpaper”. This story clearly takes the gender criticism aspect of writing.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” begins with the main character speaking of her surroundings and her husband John. It is noted that her thoughts are …show more content…
I verily believe she thinks it is the writing, which made me sick!”(Gilman, 68) The narrator begins to obsess over the horrible yellow wallpaper, which is described as a smoldering unclean yellow, she begins to fixate on the patterns and it seemingly is driving her crazy. She sees a shape of a women creeping behind the wallpaper and she becomes obsessed with this woman, desperate to free her. The narrator goes into great detail describing how at night in any kind of light how the pattern of the wallpaper becomes like bars, this a metaphor to the prison that she is kept in especially since her husband is at home with her in the evening but out and about in the daytime. The yellow wallpaper is symbolic of the constraints that women of the 19th century had to endure binding them to the home becoming a prison, forcing them to live within the confines of the man and the idea of a “woman’s role”. As the narrator creeps about the room like the woman in the wallpaper and peels back the wallpaper much to her husband’s protest she finally cries out that she is free saying, “I’ve got out at last in spite of you and
“The Yellow Wallpaper” begins with the main character speaking of her surroundings and her husband John. It is noted that her thoughts are …show more content…
I verily believe she thinks it is the writing, which made me sick!”(Gilman, 68) The narrator begins to obsess over the horrible yellow wallpaper, which is described as a smoldering unclean yellow, she begins to fixate on the patterns and it seemingly is driving her crazy. She sees a shape of a women creeping behind the wallpaper and she becomes obsessed with this woman, desperate to free her. The narrator goes into great detail describing how at night in any kind of light how the pattern of the wallpaper becomes like bars, this a metaphor to the prison that she is kept in especially since her husband is at home with her in the evening but out and about in the daytime. The yellow wallpaper is symbolic of the constraints that women of the 19th century had to endure binding them to the home becoming a prison, forcing them to live within the confines of the man and the idea of a “woman’s role”. As the narrator creeps about the room like the woman in the wallpaper and peels back the wallpaper much to her husband’s protest she finally cries out that she is free saying, “I’ve got out at last in spite of you and