Gender Division in the Yellow Wallpaper
In the story The Yellow Wallpaper written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Gilman uses the tale of psychological insanity to portray the position of women, especially pointing to married women. Readers understand this story to be a horror tale about a woman who loses her mind, but little do they know that there is much more to just all the symbols of insanity but also the theme of gender division in the Nineteenth century.
Firstly, the yellow wallpaper reveals a gender division between John and his wife due to his ignorance towards her. John’s superiority towards his career as a physician causes him to misjudge his wife only to help her or so he thinks he's helping her. She is forced to hide her fears in …show more content…
It is clear that the narrator of this short story found an off feeling about the wallpaper that is in the room. She describes the pattern as "committing every artistic sin,"(649) for example and then also characterizes the color as repellant in the way that it is a "smoldering unclean yellow."(649). the narrator's initial description signals a little more than distaste and is a warning for what's to come, being her mental restraints. The women trapped in the formless yellow wallpaper described like a jail cell exemplified the narrator trapped in the nineteenth centuries, which is worse than an unpleasant pattern and similar to being in a jail cell. Women's lives were based on the Victorian lifestyle, in which the narrator was in. Marriage, kids and little to no education with only the house to be kept in. Not only did this symbol her escape to her Victorian lifestyle and the state of mind she is stuck in, but also her marriage with john as she carefully examines the deeper meaning of the wallpaper each day, causing her to come to the fact that she despises …show more content…
As kinky as Victorian women sound, they were the complete opposite. They were repressed from interacting with any sexual activity but of course being mothers that was not the case. Although they were forced to be pure even after marriage, society still expected them to be motherly and disgusted with the act of sex. The bed symbolizes the Victorian culture in that era where they were forced to live in, just like the narrator was forced to lie on that bed.
Also, the house that they rented may have a deeper meaning than just a summer house for her to rest in. The house symbols an insane asylum because everything described in the room she is kept in symbolizes it perfectly. Although it might have been a nursery, all the details add up to the way an asylum would be. The barred up windows, rings in the wall, chained up bed and the atrocious wallpaper. The women she had seen in the walls may have been past patients trying to escape this place as well as she is.
By the end, the narrator has gone insanely insane when she sees herself being that trapped women in the wallpaper and finally escaping. The gothic horror tale, The Yellow Wallpaper broke down all the symbols leading to socio-political allegory the women in the Victorian era suffered in, including the narrator
In the story The Yellow Wallpaper written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Gilman uses the tale of psychological insanity to portray the position of women, especially pointing to married women. Readers understand this story to be a horror tale about a woman who loses her mind, but little do they know that there is much more to just all the symbols of insanity but also the theme of gender division in the Nineteenth century.
Firstly, the yellow wallpaper reveals a gender division between John and his wife due to his ignorance towards her. John’s superiority towards his career as a physician causes him to misjudge his wife only to help her or so he thinks he's helping her. She is forced to hide her fears in …show more content…
It is clear that the narrator of this short story found an off feeling about the wallpaper that is in the room. She describes the pattern as "committing every artistic sin,"(649) for example and then also characterizes the color as repellant in the way that it is a "smoldering unclean yellow."(649). the narrator's initial description signals a little more than distaste and is a warning for what's to come, being her mental restraints. The women trapped in the formless yellow wallpaper described like a jail cell exemplified the narrator trapped in the nineteenth centuries, which is worse than an unpleasant pattern and similar to being in a jail cell. Women's lives were based on the Victorian lifestyle, in which the narrator was in. Marriage, kids and little to no education with only the house to be kept in. Not only did this symbol her escape to her Victorian lifestyle and the state of mind she is stuck in, but also her marriage with john as she carefully examines the deeper meaning of the wallpaper each day, causing her to come to the fact that she despises …show more content…
As kinky as Victorian women sound, they were the complete opposite. They were repressed from interacting with any sexual activity but of course being mothers that was not the case. Although they were forced to be pure even after marriage, society still expected them to be motherly and disgusted with the act of sex. The bed symbolizes the Victorian culture in that era where they were forced to live in, just like the narrator was forced to lie on that bed.
Also, the house that they rented may have a deeper meaning than just a summer house for her to rest in. The house symbols an insane asylum because everything described in the room she is kept in symbolizes it perfectly. Although it might have been a nursery, all the details add up to the way an asylum would be. The barred up windows, rings in the wall, chained up bed and the atrocious wallpaper. The women she had seen in the walls may have been past patients trying to escape this place as well as she is.
By the end, the narrator has gone insanely insane when she sees herself being that trapped women in the wallpaper and finally escaping. The gothic horror tale, The Yellow Wallpaper broke down all the symbols leading to socio-political allegory the women in the Victorian era suffered in, including the narrator