The Yellow Wallpaper -- Literary Analysis, Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman 1892 gothic and horror short floor The Yellow Wallpaper traces the mental decline of a woman eyepatch undergoing a rest cure. This captivating story illustrates the curtailment employ of the protagonist in a patriarchal society. Her husband, John, a physician, has taken the narrator, a new mother, to a rented country home for the summer in set for her to recoer from postpartum psychosis. He isolates her in an upstairs nursery, a manner with barred windows, a nailed down bed, and odious yellow paper, and forbids her to write, in accordance of rights with the philosophy of the rest cure. Although the constraints placed on the protagonist turn up to be repressive, it leads her to an intriguingly dangerous obsession with the yellow wallpaper that causes her to triumph oer societal oppression and constraints within her marriage, giving her a heroic identity. The author conveys all this through her ingenious usage of the image of the yellow wallpaper, wh ich functions as a part of the setting, an object correlation to the narrators physical and mental repression, and lastly as a symbol of her life.harmonize to one critic The subjection of women originated in prehistoric times when the males counterbalance monopolized all social activity and women were confined to motherhood and domestic duties (Degler 178). During the ordinal century these societal traditions were still imposed on women. Quawas confirms this statement when she states In the nineteenth century, women, as agent of moral influence, are expected to maintain the domestic sphere as a cheerful, pure haven for their husbands to return to home distributively evening (A New Womans Journey into Insanity). Because of these expectancies the protagonist is a power... ...lpaper Gilman clearly illustrates by the use of symbols, imagery, characters to display how women were treated in a patriarchal society. The writer appears to have semi-melancholic mood throughout the story. Gilman clearly shows how the stifling plight of the narrator who was kept in isolation becomes defiant and deducts a deeper understanding of her life and role in society. The woman in the wallpaper does not only represent the narrators own shared out self but all women who are overly restrained and jumpstart by a society that deem these women incapable of self-actualization. As a result of her preoccupation with the the yellow wallpaper she descends into madness, which ultimately enabled her to triumph over marital and societal constraints. Therefore the writer demonstrates that in order to gain liberty one suffers immensely before change is accomplished.