The Yellow Wallpaper Influences

Many authors are influenced by events throughout their lives. These influences can be small occurrences that are present throughout the author’s life. Many are major and change an important aspect of their life. Either big or small, these influences leave a mark in the author’s life. Many authors take these influences and transform them into a work of art, whether it be a painting, poem, or even a story. These influences range from one’s beliefs, one’s achievements, and sometimes one’s disability. After reading Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” readers infer how Gilman’s work is largely influenced by her own suffering from mental illness, her feminist ideas, and by women’s oppression she faces in the 19th century. Gilman …show more content…
In Gilman’s life, she believed that women were unequal to men and should do something about it. Gilman shows frequently throughout her story of her want for women to stand out against men and not be looked down upon. Cynthia Davis explains in her biography of Gilman that Gilman uses many examples of “Jane” refusing what “John” says she must do to symbolize feminism refusing what males make them do (100). This shows how Gilman wanted women to stand out, choose their own paths, and look for a want for an independent life. She wants women to make their own choices in life instead of taking the traditional route. Janice Haney-Peritz compares Gilman’s story to the movement of feminism in the 19th century (123). In doing this Haney-Peritz exemplifies how “The Yellow Wallpaper” takes Gilman’s thoughts and experiences with feminism and shows how they take the story and direct the plot of the story from the beginning to the end. Starting at the beginning, “Jane” follows commands from “John” without question, but by the end, “Jane” has overcome “John” as a new person, the woman in the wallpaper. The woman in the wallpaper symbolizes feminism trapped by male influences, which symbolizes the wallpaper. In the middle of the story, Gilman shows this as she says, “[t]he faint figure behind seemed …show more content…
She uses many examples in “The Yellow Wallpaper” to express her experiences with oppression. She shows how she experienced it first-hand and how many people recognized it. During this time, a majority of the population overlooked women’s oppression and of that majority, most were men. Most knew it was there, but never put effort to uncover it. Gilman expresses this as she states, “[t]his wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then” (313). These lines symbolize how oppressions of women were disliked, but never noticed until seen in certain situations and still then they were never taken seriously enough to act upon. Oppression was extremely overlooked to the point that many never even considered it was real just to avoid the problems that came with it, including the oppression itself. Gilman points out an example of this oppression as she states, “…[h]e said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies” (312). This implies how male influences in women’s lives did not give any importance to women’s opinions and make women think their opinion was unhealthy. This was prevalent all throughout the 19th century and Gilman wanted to expose it as it really was. During her life, she dealt