Mikenzie Fitzpatrick
Bro. Williams
ENG 335
7/2/2015
“The Yellow Wallpaper” “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman engages the audience into the inner self of a young mother and wife throughout the story. Gilman’s purpose in writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” shows a woman’s perspective on oppression, victimization, failure, and her freedom. By writing the story from a first-person feministic point of view the narrator shows the struggle of women’s independence and individuality in a male dominated society. In the story, the wife is struggling to gain her freedom from herself, but also her husband. The husband wants the narrator to fulfill her duty as a wife and young mother, but she feels trapped in the societal norms. Gilman …show more content…
Gilman could have chose anything that could have hid in the wallpaper but she decided a woman would be best to show that women are confined in themselves because of what the world expects of them. Society wanted women to be child-like and conform to their husbands. Society did not want women to obtain their own identity. Quawas says, “the interpretation of the narrator’s decent into madness as a way to health and wellbeing, as a rejection of and escape from an insane society” (Pg.42). This relates to those who use “women” and “insanity” together because the women are described as rebels whom madness is nothing more than a description that applies to the gender norms in society. Society doesn’t view insanity as a desperate communication for the powerless but views it more as a form of rebellion against confinement. The fact that the narrator peeled the wallpaper away in search of the woman trapped inside is deeply symbolic and gives the reader a sense of how she feels about society confining her. The narrator says, “I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane! And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back” (pg. 497). As she peels the wallpaper away, she discovers the unsettling image of her own suffocation and confinement through her doppelganger. She realizes that she has escaped society and became the “new
Bro. Williams
ENG 335
7/2/2015
“The Yellow Wallpaper” “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman engages the audience into the inner self of a young mother and wife throughout the story. Gilman’s purpose in writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” shows a woman’s perspective on oppression, victimization, failure, and her freedom. By writing the story from a first-person feministic point of view the narrator shows the struggle of women’s independence and individuality in a male dominated society. In the story, the wife is struggling to gain her freedom from herself, but also her husband. The husband wants the narrator to fulfill her duty as a wife and young mother, but she feels trapped in the societal norms. Gilman …show more content…
Gilman could have chose anything that could have hid in the wallpaper but she decided a woman would be best to show that women are confined in themselves because of what the world expects of them. Society wanted women to be child-like and conform to their husbands. Society did not want women to obtain their own identity. Quawas says, “the interpretation of the narrator’s decent into madness as a way to health and wellbeing, as a rejection of and escape from an insane society” (Pg.42). This relates to those who use “women” and “insanity” together because the women are described as rebels whom madness is nothing more than a description that applies to the gender norms in society. Society doesn’t view insanity as a desperate communication for the powerless but views it more as a form of rebellion against confinement. The fact that the narrator peeled the wallpaper away in search of the woman trapped inside is deeply symbolic and gives the reader a sense of how she feels about society confining her. The narrator says, “I’ve got out at last, in spite of you and Jane! And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back” (pg. 497). As she peels the wallpaper away, she discovers the unsettling image of her own suffocation and confinement through her doppelganger. She realizes that she has escaped society and became the “new