The Yellow Wallpaper Gender Analysis

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written in 1892, during a time of great change for women. From the early to mid-nineteenth century women protested the domestic ideology that suggested the women’s place was in their homes where she would carry out her role as just a wife and mother. Men, on the other hand, were in the public setting through work, politics, and economics. By the end of the eighteenth century women had gained momentum in the push for change and were pushing for roles outside of the home that brought out their intelligence and non-domestic centered talents. Gilman firmly believed that woman should be on equal ground with men and be independent from them. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is an inside look
John” patronizing and paternal attitude toward his wife was only a tiny percentage due to her mental illness. He completely disregarded her well thought out opinions and her “flights of fancy” with just as much disregard as when he degrades her creative wishes to write. He talks to her as if she is but a little child and he is her father. He calls her little names like “little girl” and “Bless her little heart.” The use of the word “little” to describe his wife, someone who should be equal to him, shows that he believes her to be inferior to him most likely because she is just a weak woman in his eyes. He constantly ignores her judgments on the best course of treatment for herself along with her other opinions. He makes her live in a room she doesn’t like, doesn’t allow her to change the wallpaper, and makes her live in a isolated room which causes her to feel more depressed and lonely. Her only company was John and the housekeeper Jeannie. John’s care showed that he believed the prevailing theories that claimed that the women’s inherent subordination left them in a childlike state of dependency to
In Gilman’s time women’s rights were only just becoming a household discussion, with the media and politics joining in on the party. Women’s right’s movements were gaining the ground that would allow them the right to vote in 1920. The repercussions from the movement were becoming more and more malicious as time went on. Noted psychologists were creating extravagant theories that supposedly demonstrated that women’s naivety, low reasoning skills, and emotional instability. Physicians that had very little actual knowledge on the inner workings of women’s bodies gave intricate ideas arguing that the womb created hysteria and foolishness, and that the womb is what causes a woman to be inferior to a man. John, being a physician himself, would have wholeheartedly agreed with what these psychologists and physicians were saying and that showed in how he treated his wife like a child. Gilman used John as a symbol for the society as a whole, in which many ladies were stuck under the community definitions of the female.
The yellow wallpaper was symbolic of how women were chained to the home and the family. For Gilman, women were bound to the set guidelines that the men determined for them. Women, in that time period, were trained to accept the parameters and stay at the house. The narrator’s wearing down of the wallpaper represents her’s and Gilman’s defiance over their role. They escaped