Who Is The Woman In The Yellow Wallpaper

Who is the woman really trapped in the story? The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman begins with the narrator, a woman who is diagnosed by her husband with temporary nervous depression with the only cure being to rest and being restrained from everyday activities. They rent an estate for the summer, John her husband, decides that she should stay in the room upstairs which is desolated with neglected furniture and the yellow paper. The narrator is not attached to the room, but she obeys her husband. She isolated in the room with nothing to do, expect stare endlessly at the wallpaper, she finds it repulsive, but notices a pattern to appear within the paper itself. Weeks go by she explains to John that she wants to see relatives, but …show more content…
The story takes place in the late nineteenth century, women’s freedom at this time was limited. According to professor Radek-Hall, there are four traits that a real woman should “piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity.” The narrator falls victim to these traits. When she explains how she feels about the room, “I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! But John would not hear it.” (Gilman 2) She does not hesitate to obey him and forget about the more appalling rooms downstairs. She tells John that she wants to write, but quickly is dismissed having to be submissive yet again. The narrator watches as the woman in the wallpaper creeps out in the nighttime and envy’s her action because they prove to be a sign of freedom “I see her in that long-shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her in those dark grapes arbors, creeping all around the garden. I don’t blame her a bit.” At the end of the story the narrator rips the wallpaper which symbolisms the expectations women were held by, hence why she declares freedom from her …show more content…
We the reader were told that the narrator didn’t want the room her husband chooses but, women were outspoken in this time. The yellow wallpaper itself is the representation women oppression hence why it is torn to shreds as lesson being taught that women deserve freedom. The narrator was obedient of her husband's demands which were abusive and had a sense of captivity to them. The captivity caused by these demands led to an unhealthy mental state. The narrator slowly went mad and started having vivid hallucinations of the wallpaper and the women she saw behind it. Mythology is the base that gives the novel a further explanation. As with vampires and werewolves coming alive at night for mischief the woman trapped behind the wallpaper did the same, she came out only with moonlight and crept around, which was a frowned upon therefore classified as mischief. The moon representing a goddess and the sun by a god gives us the context of why the moonlight is more prominent for the