The Yellow Wallpaper Feminist Analysis

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of "The Yellow Wallpaper". Was a noted figure in the women's movement at the turn of the 20th century. She has written many feminist pieces, "The Yellow Wallpaper" included. Although many would see this as Gilman criticizing her former doctor, it is clear that the underlying symbolism and feminist connotations tell the true story. This is achieved through the yellow wallpaper itself, the nursery room, even John could be seen as the patriarchy itself. Central to the story is the wallpaper itself. It is within the wallpaper the narrator finds her identity and freedom. Her obsession with the wallpaper begins subtlety and the consumers both the narrator and story. As the narrator becomes consumed in the wallpaper, more complex images appear. First she sees "bulbous eyes"() from behind the wallpaper. Eventually this figured is viewed as a woman who "creeps"() and the pattern of the wallpaper is revealed to represent bars. Later, "The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out."() As the story progresses the narrator identifies more and more with the figure in the wallpaper. …show more content…
After the narrator wishes for the walls to be repapered, John refuses, saying "after the wallpaper has changed it would be the heavy bedstead and then the barred windows, and then the gate at the head of the stairs, and so on" (). Even though she feels repressed by these bars, John won't do anything about it. In addition the wallpaper changes to form bars, "At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars!"(). Although the paper does not physically confine her like the bars and gates, it represents more of a psychological prison. All of her thoughts are devoted to the wallpaper, it is not until the end of the story when she tears down most of the paper, that she frees her