Who Is Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Use Of Feminism In The Yellow Wallpaper

Charlotte Perkins Gilman follows the footsteps of the feminists Sarah Grimke, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony when she addresses the identity of woman in society in her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. The narrative is a collection of journal entries written by the wife of a physician, John, who forbids his wife from working (writing) and instead encourages healthy eating and exercise as a treatment for her “temporary nervous depression”. This diagnosis was commonly given to women at the time. Gilman, like other feminists that preceded her, uses her short story to show society what needs to be addressed by providing anti-aesthetics and aesthetics using symbols and including female characters that are influenced by society. In 1837, Sarah Grimke wrote a series of letters that became the founding documents of the woman’s movement(Grimke). There were 15 letters that Grimke intended to generate change with. It took 11 years to really upsurge any action and in 1848 the first convention for the Woman’s Rights Movement too place (Burns). Gilman was standing on the shoulders of the women before her in 1892 when she wrote the narrative. Elizabeth Cady …show more content…
The first being the yellow wallpaper which she described as revolting, fading in color, and lacking beauty. She wrote of a woman in the wallpaper who is trapped and that is her alter ego. She feels trapped in her life by her husband and society. The nursery her husband chooses for them to stay in represents how he sees her as a baby when in reality she had a baby herself. There are more symbols in the nursery which are the bed and bars on the windows. The bed was nailed to the ground as if she was living in an insane asylum and the bars on the walls as if she was living in a prison. Gilman tells of the beauty, or aesthetics, of the house and the garden but you can see the contrast in the inside when she describes the