Free College Essays-The Woman In The Yellow Wallpaper

The Woman in the Wallpaper “The Yellow Wallpaper” is set at a time when women could not easily flourish. Treated as less then men, many suffered at the hands of medicine as the narrator does. Her husband, her brother and even her husband’s sister who “thinks it is the writing which made [her] sick”(481) have more control over her recovery than she does. When she speaks on her own behalf, “John laughs at [her]”(478). Her suffering is added to by the popular Rest Cure, which limits her writing, socializing and other forms of expression. The central symbol of the wallpaper is produced when she turns to less explicit means of communicating; she imagines the wallpaper as a grandiose unfolding symbol for her true thoughts and feelings. Figures in the wallpaper reflect the woman’s character and conflicts in detail while also illustrating the social constraints on women at the time, encouraged by her husband. The descriptions …show more content…
The climactic scene is centered entirely on the woman in the wallpaper, who is seemingly interchangeable with the narrator at this point. The narrator plans on tying up the woman and shortly after, she herself is “securely fastened” (489), showing her reluctance to defy her husbands wishes and leave, while still tearing the wallpaper as an escape. Even when the paper is down, and the shadow woman takes control of the narrative she feels bound by the social constructs to “get back behind the pattern”(489). Now free, she still “fits in that long smooch around the wall”(489) and walking around the room, she stays in it. Like “so many of those creeping women” (489) she has failed to overcome the oppression of the male dominated world. In a futile attempt to escape the patriarchal standards, she destroys the wallpaper just as her mind, provoked by inflicted boredom and illness, destroys