How To Write An Essay On The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper In the novelette, The Yellow Wallpaper, the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, writes a self-reflecting personal narrative that describes and criticizes the role of women in 1892. Women were treated like children and forced to focus on being a loving wife and keeping up appearances over all else, even physical or mental health. There are several implications that women are treated like children throughout the story. The narrator is put in a nursery with barred windows, suggesting that she is incapable of controlling herself around windows and in a room. Her husband, John refers to her as “a blessed little goose” and a “little girl,” and also spoke in the third person in response to a question she asked, as though he felt she was not even worth speaking to (134, 139). Furthermore, John is portrayed as controlling her, even when she is merely in the room, with the lines, “He is very careful and loving and never lets me stir without special direction,” (132). Her husband controls nearly every aspect of her life because he feels that she is incapable of doing so herself. The author also reflects this child-like expectation through her writing style for the narrator, making use of several exclamation points, italicized words, and lower range vocabulary in some areas than would be expected of a higher class educated doctor’s wife, utilizing words like “silly” and “glad.” The use of this in sections of the text …show more content…
She reflects the child-like treatment and regard for them, and the expectation that their husband’s happiness and reputation came before themselves. Gilman further criticizes these social expectations and roles for women by showing how these contributed to the breakdown of the narrator’s mental state, particularly her husband’s efforts to keep her out of the public eye by putting her in the attic