Victorian Women: Society’s Puppets
In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator of the text was depicted as a woman suffering from an anxiety illness that she identifies as real, but her blinded husband, John, thought she wasn’t sick at all and all she needed was to rest for a while. As the text progressed, the narrator began to become connected to the yellow wallpaper in the nursery room she was staying at, seeing things move within the wallpaper and even seeing women trapped within it as well. The narrator’s illness progressively got worse as she had to be strong and fight her illness by herself since her husband and his sister, Jennie, were no good for help and she would get judged harshly for being weak as a woman. …show more content…
The text gave rise to many marriages, job, and writing depictions that affected many Victorian women back then and showed how they were reduced to mere puppets to follow a strict rudiment by society. Marriages were where a woman 's dependency was all on her husband, jobs was an extremely difficult and bitter war for women who wanted and/or needed to do, and writing was seen as a dangerous act of a woman showing freedom, voicing her opinion, and educating herself. These depictions were given throughout the text, through the narrator’s words, actions, and descriptions of the house, the wallpaper, her husband, his sister, and herself. Through the text, it helped explain and gave an understanding on not only the narrator had to go through in society, but also the thousands of women that had to follow through or else face extreme disgrace by society for not being a “real” woman. Just as Margaret Oliphant, in “Criminals, Idiots, Women, & Minors, described the past Victorian woman, “She is the drudge of humanity in its uncivilized state, and in the very highest artificial condition she carries with her natural burdens which no one else can bear” (208). Victorian women, as with the narrator, were society’s puppets being pulled by the strings to do whatever pleased society and they suffered greatly from the lack of free will and not knowing who they really were in the world besides being just a
In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator of the text was depicted as a woman suffering from an anxiety illness that she identifies as real, but her blinded husband, John, thought she wasn’t sick at all and all she needed was to rest for a while. As the text progressed, the narrator began to become connected to the yellow wallpaper in the nursery room she was staying at, seeing things move within the wallpaper and even seeing women trapped within it as well. The narrator’s illness progressively got worse as she had to be strong and fight her illness by herself since her husband and his sister, Jennie, were no good for help and she would get judged harshly for being weak as a woman. …show more content…
The text gave rise to many marriages, job, and writing depictions that affected many Victorian women back then and showed how they were reduced to mere puppets to follow a strict rudiment by society. Marriages were where a woman 's dependency was all on her husband, jobs was an extremely difficult and bitter war for women who wanted and/or needed to do, and writing was seen as a dangerous act of a woman showing freedom, voicing her opinion, and educating herself. These depictions were given throughout the text, through the narrator’s words, actions, and descriptions of the house, the wallpaper, her husband, his sister, and herself. Through the text, it helped explain and gave an understanding on not only the narrator had to go through in society, but also the thousands of women that had to follow through or else face extreme disgrace by society for not being a “real” woman. Just as Margaret Oliphant, in “Criminals, Idiots, Women, & Minors, described the past Victorian woman, “She is the drudge of humanity in its uncivilized state, and in the very highest artificial condition she carries with her natural burdens which no one else can bear” (208). Victorian women, as with the narrator, were society’s puppets being pulled by the strings to do whatever pleased society and they suffered greatly from the lack of free will and not knowing who they really were in the world besides being just a