Patriarchy In The Yellow Wallpaper

In 1776, the future first lady of the United States of America, Abigail Adams, wrote her husband, “If perticuliar care and attention is not paid to the Laidies we are determined to foment a Rebelion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any Laws in which we have no voice, or Representation”. Ever since Aristotle drew up his plan of utter nonsense, women have been place as lesser than males. However, women have known this philosophy as being absolute rubbish for a long time. Hypatia of Alexandria was one of the earliest female philosophers. Hundreds of years after Aristotle, Hypatia was the leading astronomer and mathematician of her day. Although she was killed by Christian zealots in 415ce, it can be seen in Abigail’s letter that the feminism
This short story is a double whammy of double meaning. In a first reading of the text the plot seems to a woman account of her own descent into madness. Upon the second reading however a deeper meaning and much scarier threat to society at large. The narrator’s husband treats her like a child or a doll after she is confronted with postpartum depression. This treatment enforces social norms of the age. Gale Database Student Resources in Context remarks, “The Victorian Age had a profound impact on the social values in the United States, stressing that women were to behave demurely and remain within the domestic sphere”. John controls the narrator’s every action, from where she can be to what she can do. If a woman didn’t act in a way suitable for the opinions of men, she would be declare hysterical and injected with heroin and opium. The narrator didn’t have a chance to become anything other than dolls her husband wanted. In the last couple lines after the woman behind the wallpaper has escaped, Gilman writes, “‘I've got out at last,’ said I, ‘ in spite of you and Jane? And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!’” Throughout the whole story, the narrator struggles to understand and destroy the wallpaper surrounding her room and free the women she sees behind it. Once she uncovers the truth behind the wallpaper she finally sees what is wrong about men controlling
Antonia is a bohemian immigrant whose father commits suicide due to not being suited to the harsh conditions of the Nebraska prairie. In response to this tragedy, she takes on his work. She is a young teenage girl, yet she handles the workload of a man to take care of her family. Antonia hires herself out to families in town to support her family and is fired by a good household, and is hired by a dysfunctional one. In the service of this husband and wife she fears for her life when she is ordered to stay alone in the house, and she barely avoids being assaulted. Most prevalent of her struggles is her ordeal with Larry Donovan. Antonia and Donovan were set to get married when he deserted her, and she was left pregnant. Antonia went back to her family and gave birth to a child all on her own. Donovan left and Antonia become a single mother out of wedlock. Single parenthood is a recently debated issue. Writer and historian Richard Alan Schwartz documents, “In 1992, Vice President Dan Quayle condemned Murphy Brown, a popular television character played by Candice Bergen, because Brown chose to conceive a child out of wedlock and to raise it without a father”. Eighty years after the novel was published, women were still being criticized and pitied for having children without the father’s involvement. However, even under the pity of her good friend Jim Burden, Antonia isn’t defeated by