Oppression In The Yellow Wallpaper

In the mid nineteenth century, women had to live within the standards of an oppressive society, therefore they were subordinate to men. During that time, society suggested that an American woman would have to take the role of the mother and the wife in given home with no other contribution towards society. Furthermore, women were considered their husband’s property. It was not until later that feminist movements started demanding for rights equal to men and roles based on intelligence and education rather than domestic techniques. During the twentieth and twenty first centuries, women in America gained some of the rights they had proclaimed. According to Thesaurus.com, oppression is the act of subjecting to burdensome, cruel or unjust …show more content…
After having moved to a beautiful yet peculiar, colonial residence for three months, John gets his wife settled in a nursery at the top of the house. However, this nursery is not ordinary; as a matter of fact, the nursery’s windows are barred. Even though the nursery used to be a gymnasium, which explains the bars, they demonstrate the state of suppression of the woman. Furthermore, the principal symbol of oppression in the story is the yellow wallpaper inside that barred room. From the first time mentioned in the story, the wallpaper’s color and patterns are seen as repellent, bothersome, formless, and confusing. According to the protagonist, The yellow wallpaper has “one of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.” As the young woman makes an attempt to find the arrangement of the pattern, she begins to find herself more obsessed with it and noticed there is a pattern hidden and only visible in the illumination of the night, which begins to seem “like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern.” Moreover, the woman in the sub-pattern seems to be creeping around and looking for an escape from the cage of the main pattern, “and she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern—it strangles so; I think that is why it has …show more content…
Even though the protagonist knew she had postpartum depression, she did not want to play the role of the stereotypical unhappy, sick wife who had to stay at home locked in a room, not being taken seriously, and following the orders and tight schedules and please her husband, All she wanted was to be freed from the chains of her disease and marriage, to have an individuality, and to be able to do things with her life. After having decoded the pattern and identifying herself as the woman locked inside it, she found a way to destroy it and seek her freedom and individuality to the young woman desired deeply in her heart, In conclusion, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses The Yellow Wallpaper to demonstrate in a short representation full of symbols and images one of the diverse ways women have been oppressed throughout history and the struggle of a mentally ill feminist to find freedom from this oppressive environment during the nineteenth