Inequality In A Doll's House
For decades, women have fought and continue to fight an underrated battle with society. Women struggled with inequality and with being inferior to men for generations so long now that this inequality is considered to be acceptable in society as a traditional social standard. Women were considered weaker, emotionally and physically, and less intelligent with little to no ability to make decisions for herself or for others in comparison to men. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Henrik Ibsen's play “A Doll House”, and additional online sources support the concept of speaking out against women's inequality. Women are lashing in opposition to society's social customs for their equal rights. Women created feminism which
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Throughout the short story, the narrator had become intensely obsessed with a yellow wallpaper in the home she resided in temporarily. Within this wallpaper, the narrator envisioned a trapped woman. The narrator expressed, “Sometimes, I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern -” (Gilman 86). The woman she imagined symbolized herself and the wallpaper symbolized all the things that caged her. The narrator felt trapped behind traditions and her husband although she was not conscious of it. Towards the conclusion of the story, Gilman clearly illustrated the beginning of feminism as the narrator managed to free the imaged woman in the wallpaper. “'I've got out at last,' I said, 'in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back'! … Now why should that man have fainted? Be he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time” (89)! In other words, the narrator proclaimed her freedom as she freed the woman she imagined within the wallpaper. She teared down the wallpaper which symbolized her tearing down all that controlled her. Once her husband observed what she had done, he fainted in shock of her actions and she had to creep over him. She did not merely step, or leap, over her husband, but she crept which represents women's very slow but steady step towards overcoming their inequality to
Throughout the short story, the narrator had become intensely obsessed with a yellow wallpaper in the home she resided in temporarily. Within this wallpaper, the narrator envisioned a trapped woman. The narrator expressed, “Sometimes, I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern -” (Gilman 86). The woman she imagined symbolized herself and the wallpaper symbolized all the things that caged her. The narrator felt trapped behind traditions and her husband although she was not conscious of it. Towards the conclusion of the story, Gilman clearly illustrated the beginning of feminism as the narrator managed to free the imaged woman in the wallpaper. “'I've got out at last,' I said, 'in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back'! … Now why should that man have fainted? Be he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time” (89)! In other words, the narrator proclaimed her freedom as she freed the woman she imagined within the wallpaper. She teared down the wallpaper which symbolized her tearing down all that controlled her. Once her husband observed what she had done, he fainted in shock of her actions and she had to creep over him. She did not merely step, or leap, over her husband, but she crept which represents women's very slow but steady step towards overcoming their inequality to