The extent of the criticism even reaches the narrator’s husband, a doctor, who is held responsible for his wife’s eventual descent into a state of madness caused by his own prescription of the resting cure. Each time that the narrator defies her husband’s wishes (which he views as knowing what is best for his wife), such actions are chastised as being irresponsible for the narrator’s expected return to complete mental health. The use of a patriarchal marriage to highlight sexism is also employed by the playwright of A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen. Ibsen portrays the Helmer’s relationship as patriarchal, in which Nora can only hope to receive what she desires by acting child-like and innocent. Both women’s marriages lead to an eventual turning point. In “The Yellow Paper,” it is an evolutionary one, where she begins to slowly hallucinate and later becomes convinced that she is a woman who has escaped her prison from within the wallpaper (a nod to the “prison” of women’s gendered expectations). In …show more content…
While Trifles critiqued marriage, as did A Doll’s House, “The Yellow Wallpaper” goes beyond just finding flaws in perceived gendered expectations in marriage, it condemns what it sees as destructive and sexist treatment of women in the field of medicine. The narrator’s descent into madness is caused by her husband, but her husband is only responsible for her condition because he does not know any better. What the doctor/husband perceives as what is in her best interest is the very thing that causes her breakdown. The doctor represents not only himself, but all men in the field of medicine who have refused to listen to women, and instead have placed treatments upon women that they ignorantly view as beneficial. Gilman uses her story as a hyperbolic example of why women’s opinions should be taken into consideration in their own