The Yellow Wallpaper Literary Analysis

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born right before the Civil War ended and was able to experience women’s struggle from inequality before women received equal rights from men. Gilman’s most influential work is a short story called “The Yellow Wallpaper”. This short story is about a woman who suffered from mental illness after giving birth. While the husband tries to help the wife with a treatment, the woman managed to become better after being isolated for a while. The main character of the story is the narrator, which is also the author of the story. Although readers might only read that this short story is about a woman suffering from mental illness after giving birth, Gilman used this to profoundly express the struggles of women after the Civil
Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is influential to women because the narrator used different literary devices like irony, metaphor, and symbolism to portray how women struggled before obtaining equal
Women were treated with inequality after the Civil War, and the author’s motivation of this short story was to use literary devices like irony, metaphor, and symbolism to convey the struggles of a woman. For instance, Gilman demonstrated that women were crying inside and felt hopeless because most women desired for freedom. Not having freedom caused women to suffer from mental illness, women were frustrated and emotional about the inequality between men and women. In addition, women suffered from lack so social status because the author emphasized how much a woman wanted freedom. Basically, the author used metaphor in the story to express the wife was as free as the cloud and free from the husband. The author used this to inform the readers that women can also accomplish many things if given the same freedom as men. In addition, the author used symbolism to illustrate the struggle of a wife during that period because men perceived that women are only to be homemakers. From the story, the author used the yellow wallpaper as a symbol to represent the norms of women after the Civil War. These norms were rules set by the society. To sum up, women suffered from inequality but managed to gain equality after women worked together to fight for equal rights. The short story like “The Yellow Wallpaper” was an encouragement to women, to