Subordination In The Yellow Wallpaper

Up until fairly recently, it was rarely questioned that a husband has a higher status than his wife and more control over her in their marriage. Close to the end of the nineteenth century, the unjust distribution of power between a husband and his wife was an accepted part of society. The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman illustrates the damaging effects of the subordination faced by women within the confines of marriage as shown through the gradual deterioration of the main characters mental state as a direct result of the refusal of her husband to acknowledge her opinions.
The treatment of the narrator by her husband John clearly shows that he holds no concern for her opinions and he views her as inferior to himself, in every way. John refers to his wife as a “little girl” (Gilman), which undermines the validity of any statement she makes on the grounds that she lacks maturity. Additionally, the narrator says “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in a marriage” (Gilman), implying that John the narrator expects to be dismissed by her husband and ridiculed for her opinions. This causes her to accept the inadequacy of her thoughts compared to her husband and leads …show more content…
The narrator’s husband treats as such an inferior that she is unable to express her concerns to him and take control of her actions in order to improve her mental health. John gives such little value to her concerns that he refuses to even recognize that she has a legitimate mental illness; similarly, he does not allow her to write even though she is adamant that it will help her. The subordination of the narrator to her husband did not allow her to communicate her need for proper treatment of her mental illness and as a result, she experiences a mental breakdown at the conclusion of the