This is going to be reflected in many works written in the nineteenth century, not only in America but all over the world. This subordination of women to men was not specific of the nineteenth century either, but we must look back to almost our origins in order to discover that women have always …show more content…
As it is explained in the story there are two kinds of patterns in this paper, the top one and the secondary one. As the narration goes by, we discover that the sub-pattern happens to be the figure of a woman according to the protagonist view. I found it very interesting, for as I was reaching the end of the story, I started to identify the yellow wall-paper with the woman herself. I thought that woman and paper were the same thing, and that what this paper is doing is paralleling the way in which the main characters sees herself, just as a secondary pattern.
The top pattern would be the man, the important figure, the one that we see first and that does not allow to see what is behind him. The figure that keeps all the attention and that does not permit the second one to overtake it.
Besides, the fact that the main character writes only when her husband is not at home gives us another example that women were not free to do what they wanted but when their husbands could not watch them. When her husband is not at home, this woman in the sub- pattern is able to reach the main position, but as she says, she would have to hide once her husband is back as home again. As she states “I suppose I shall have to get back behind the pattern when it comes night, and that is hard!” (Perkins, 656). Therefore, when the husband is at home the woman is just a secondary figure, and she can only be free when she is