What Makes A Woman's Struggle For Freedom In The Yellow Wallpaper

In the early- to mid-nineteenth century, domestic ideology placed American middle class women as a spiritual and moral leaders within their homes. These principals suggested, a woman's place was within the private province of the home, where the woman would carry out her prescribed role(s) as a wife and mother. Men, on the other hand, would predominantly rule the public realm through work, politics, and economics. In "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Gilman, the narrator and John, her husband, rent a colonial mansion for the summer. The narrator feels uncomfortable in the mansion, but obeys her husband’s decision to stay. The narrator also submits to John when he chooses a large, airy room (nursery) on the top floor instead of the smaller,
nicer room on the bottom floor. Furthermore, John is a doctor and therefore wins all of their arguments. Restricted to the upstairs room without any visitors or freedom of expression, the narrator's already delicate mental health worsens as she consumes herself with the yellow wallpaper covering the room. Convinced that a woman is trapped behind it, the narrator eliminates the wallpaper to free the woman, yet her insistence that she has "got out at last” show her lack of mental instability through her belief that she is the woman behind the wall. Gilman’s theme of subordination of women in marriage and society can be seen through several elements of fiction, three of them being character, point of view and symbolism.

Sheltered away in a mental prison of her husband’s doing, the protagonist is the incarnation of the struggles encountered by women seeking freedom.
The narrator is a young wife and mother who has newly began to struggle with symptoms of depression and anxiety. Although she does not consider anything to be wrong with her, her physician husband, diagnoses her with neurasthenia and recommends numerous months of S. Weir Mitchell’s famed “rest cure.” In addition to being limited to the nursery in their rented summer home, the narrator is specifically forbidden to write or engage in any creative activity. The narrator firmly believes being able to engage in such activities may be the best solution to improving her state of mind, as stated, “I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me." (). The narrator is stuck between wanting to please her husband, adopt her role as a wife and mother and her longing to express herself creatively. She begins to secretly write without her husband’s permission or knowing, “There comes John, and I must put this away-he hates to have me write a word” (). This is the first occurrence the narrator demonstrates signs of some independence and disobedience. As the story further unfolds, the narrator begins to find comfort in the “hideous wallpaper” that covers the walls in her room of confinement. She progressively begins to see a female imprisoned behind the bar-like pattern of the
wallpaper. She discovers both herself and the woman behind the wallpaper suffer from tyranny and captivity. While The Yellow Wallpaper can be considered as a psychological thriller, it is clear from a feminist standpoint that this is a commentary on the state of women in the late 1800s, and perhaps even of the author’s own struggles with a society run by males.

John is a “textbook example” of a dominating spouse. He holds complete control over his wife and treats her as if she were inferior to him. John does not take his wife’s ideas seriously, and finds humor in her thoughts and opinions as perceived here: “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage” (). It is evident John believes his wife’s thoughts are preposterous and does not take her seriously, as expected by society in a marriage at that time, until it is too late and she becomes mad. It is not until the narrator takes control of her own thoughts is John’s role as a strong, protecting husband and principal is reversed- it is he, not a female, who faints when confronted with madness: “Now why should that man have fainted?” (), The narrator asks herself. Having had seen his wife in a state of delirium (symbolically removing the hold John had on her), John faints and becomes much like a stereotypical “shocked woman” himself. John is the narrator’s essential counterpart, without his influence, her eventual freedom would not be gained.
Gilman’s use of the first person to convey the story allows the reader to follow along into the insanity and encourages certain levels of sympathy for the narrator and her troubles. Gilman’s consistent use of the word “I” allows the reader to put themselves into the narrator’s mind and allows one to have compassion with the circumstances the narrator finds herself in.