Gender Subordination
Tanisha Springer
November 24, 2013
ENG 201- 027
Professor Noimann
Gender Subordination in The Yellow Wallpaper
The era between about 1890 and 1920, often referred to as “the turn of the century” or Progressive era saw transformation in many features of society in the United States. The nation’s swift industrialization and urbanization in altering the way people worked and lived, also brought about a number of economic, political, and social reforms to respond to these modifications. Works of literature written by American women during this period provide valuable perceptions into the dilemmas of married middle-class white women in Progressive-Era America. Without remarking on historic developments, The Yellow Wallpaper displays a married woman in a domestic setting that reflects the altering national outlook at the turn of the twentieth century. This story calls attention to conditions of domestic life for married woman at the turn of the century. (Booth 347)
The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, gives the reader an understanding into a largely known problem in human societies and relationships: gender subordination. Although the short-story was circulated in 1892, the fictional short-story 's power of resonating people 's nonfictional concern of gender subordination in the present makes the story particularly unsettling. Through the text 's illustration of the narrator 's relationships with her husband John, her brother whose name is not mentioned in the short story, child 's nanny, Mary, and her journal entries, the reader is exposed to a sequence of events that trace the predicaments of a woman - the narrator - living in a male dominated social system known as a patriarchy. In other words, the text shows a society composed of the controlling and the fragile, which is usually a component of a gender-dominated society. Moreover, The Yellow Wallpaper reveals that societies based on patriarchal-dominated social systems create
November 24, 2013
ENG 201- 027
Professor Noimann
Gender Subordination in The Yellow Wallpaper
The era between about 1890 and 1920, often referred to as “the turn of the century” or Progressive era saw transformation in many features of society in the United States. The nation’s swift industrialization and urbanization in altering the way people worked and lived, also brought about a number of economic, political, and social reforms to respond to these modifications. Works of literature written by American women during this period provide valuable perceptions into the dilemmas of married middle-class white women in Progressive-Era America. Without remarking on historic developments, The Yellow Wallpaper displays a married woman in a domestic setting that reflects the altering national outlook at the turn of the twentieth century. This story calls attention to conditions of domestic life for married woman at the turn of the century. (Booth 347)
The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, gives the reader an understanding into a largely known problem in human societies and relationships: gender subordination. Although the short-story was circulated in 1892, the fictional short-story 's power of resonating people 's nonfictional concern of gender subordination in the present makes the story particularly unsettling. Through the text 's illustration of the narrator 's relationships with her husband John, her brother whose name is not mentioned in the short story, child 's nanny, Mary, and her journal entries, the reader is exposed to a sequence of events that trace the predicaments of a woman - the narrator - living in a male dominated social system known as a patriarchy. In other words, the text shows a society composed of the controlling and the fragile, which is usually a component of a gender-dominated society. Moreover, The Yellow Wallpaper reveals that societies based on patriarchal-dominated social systems create
Cited: Booth, Alison, and Kelly J. Mays. “Cultural and Historical Contexts Women in Turn-Of-the-Century America”. The Norton Introduction to Literature. Shorter 10th. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2010. 347-352. Print. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Ed. Alison Booth. Shorter 10th Ed. New York: W.W Norton & Company, 2010. 354-363. Print.