The Yellow Wallpaper Woman

In the book Literature for Life, before reading “The Yellow Wallpaper”, there is a brief description of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and her life. In the description, it tells us how Gilman was a strong advocate of women’s rights and how her stories often spoke out for women that could not in her time period (pg.1035). Gilman’s belief that there is no difference in the mentality levels between men or women is strongly shown and explained through “The Yellow Wallpaper”. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story about a woman who has a mental illness but is unable to heal and actually made worse, due to her physician husband’s lack of belief and apathy. The story takes place during a time period around the late 1800’s or early 1900’s, where women were …show more content…
Gilman shows two very different sides of women during the time period in which “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written in. The first side Gilman shows us readers is the conformist side that women seemed to take. The females in this time period usually went along with the belief that women should listen to men without any objection or opinions of their own. This is made clear when Gilman writes on page 1037, “I meant to be such a help to John…here I am a comparative burden already!” The narrator feels that she is a burden to her husband because she does not like the wallpaper and keeps speaking her thoughts about it even after he makes it clear that he will not change it. She blames herself for not being able to cope with the room her husband has made her live in even although there is a very simple solution to her problem. These solutions included changing rooms or changing the horrific wallpaper, but her husband disagrees with her. Gilman is also able to show the other side of women through first person point of view using the narrator, Jane. Jane finally overcomes her conformist ways towards the end of the story when Gilman writes on page 1045, “I’ve got out at last…so you can’t put me back”. This example explains how Jane felt so trapped with her family and that she finally managed to speak up and act on behalf of herself. …show more content…
There is a solid sense of symbolism that I can view from the writing and details about the yellow wallpaper in the story itself. The wallpaper in Jane and John’s room represents imprisonment and this is made clear when the author Gilman writes on page 1044, “The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out…” My representation of imprisonment is created from the yellow wallpaper because the narrator asks to remove the wallpaper over and over again but isn’t allowed to do so. She is not happy to be confined to the room she dislikes with a passion due to the stubbornness of her husband. The quote shows that the narrator Jane is finally realizing that her husband’s treatment towards her is wrong and that she does not want to be a part of her prison-like life. Gilman also shows how obsessed the narrator has become with the wallpaper, adding to her mental illness by increasing her hysteria. This next example shows that and the symbolism of the wallpaper when the author Gilman writes on page 1045, “…angry enough to do something desperate…jump out the window…” The narrator’s obsession with the wallpaper increases because she wanted to change it but wasn’t allowed to do so. She truly believes that she is the woman in the wallpaper trapped behind the bars. The narrator was finally able to see how she had little say about anything in her life. This feeling