The Yellow Wallpaper: The Women's Rights Movement?

Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written at a very controversial time period: the women’s rights movement. While this book serves as a predominant feminist text, it clearly outlines the voices of changing ideals. As written by literary analyst Jurgen Wolter in ““The Yellow Wallpaper” The Ambivalence of Changing Discourses,” the text has been “approached from various other perspectives, ranging from biographical, deconstructive, reader's response, genre studies.” In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” there are three main points of discussion: gender roles of society at the time, symbolism of the wallpaper, and the results of the changing values. All of these factors contribute to the actions of the character and the changes that she experiences. “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written at a time called the Late Victorian era, a time of reformation and change. It is at this time that women’s rights activist Elizabeth Stanton met at the Seneca Falls convention. This idea of women having more freedom and less confinement of home started to spread. Opponents of this movement claimed that women having these “abnormal” ideas were mentally insane. That is why some claim that “The Yellow
Wallpaper” is a feminist text meant to influence society and describe the foolishness of such ideas. In the story, the narrator’s husband is a renowned doctor, someone who holds a high position in society. The narrator clearly explains the status quo: John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer and that satisfies him.” Just because a man with a might position says something, it makes it so. He even confines her to her own room, a room with a barred window and a moveless bed. As Wolter explains: “and she accepts this denomination because she has internalized the male infantilization of women. Women are treated like little kids. This book protests against such ideas and beliefs. The wallpaper in the narrator’s bedroom plays an important role in the adjustment of attitude.
The analysis of Jurgen Wolter clearly states: “Yellow and decadence were almost synonymous in the public and aesthetic discourse at the turn of the century.” The color yellow in the story is not a good yellow: it represents decay and death. It was the speaker’s husband (John) that put the narrator into a room where “the color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow.” John obviously knows he put her there and for what reason: to slowly drain the life out of her. To the narrator the yellow represents society and its cruel views on equality. That is the very reason why at the end, the narrator decides to tear the wallpaper down, to defy society and its ridiculous
ideals. At the end of the story it says: “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did and right across my path by the wall so that i had to creep over him every time.” This is a contrast to the beginning of the story where John is seen as high and mighty and not is so weak he can’t hold himself up. It is at the end that “she finally is able to regain sanity and independence.” The whole story the narrator was defying society’s ethics and by making her husband weak, she has made herself stronger and free. When she tears of the whole wallpaper and sees the blank wall, the narrator realizes that she has a chance for a new beginning, without confinement and suffering put on her. She locks herself away from her husband but after her final defiance, she no longer has to because she has no need to be secretive and indiscrete. “I am determined that nobody shall find it out but myself.” She found her salvation.