'Women's Confinement In The Yellow Wallpaper'
The story is titled “The Yellow Wall- Paper”, and indeed, the dreadful wallpaper that the narrator comes to hate so much is a significant symbol in the story. The yellow wallpaper can represent many ideas and conditions, among them, the sense of entrapment, the notion of creativity gone astray, and a distraction that becomes an obsession. Examine the references to the yellow wallpaper and one notices how they become more frequent and how they develop over the course of the story. Why is the wallpaper an adequate symbol to represent the women’s confinement and her emotional condition? The wallpaper is definitely an adequate symbol to represent the woman’s confinement and her emotional condition, due to the restraint her husband has placed
upon her, she is unable to neither use her mind nor express herself. Therefore, every little line, design, or pattern she see in the wallpaper she affixes it to her experiences. In the beginning of the story the narrator emphasis on how the women does not express how she feels. She allows her husband as well as her brother to dictate what is best for her. Her husband has denied her the right to do anything that gives her pleasure, such as whom she can visit, the right to work, and to write, which use to give her great pleasure. The woman’s husband as well as her brother are both physicians who believe she only have o nervous depression. So when the woman states “What is one to do?” (1735) she is clearly – asaying that she is inferior to the men in her life. The woman feels that she does not have the right to question the good doctors of high standards when she herself is only a mere woman, who is experiencing a nervous depression. “It is stripped off- the paper- in great patches all around the head of my bed”, one of those sprawling flamboyant pattern committing ever artistic sin”. (1735) this description of the wallpaper is symbolic to the way the woman feel about her illness. When she talks about the patches being stripped away the woman is describing how her thoughts, emotions, and even her life is being stripped away, “ the patterns of artistic sin”, explains how she wants to do as she please; to let her creative side of her be known. “The front pattern does move- and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it, and she is all the time trying to climb through” (1743) The woman see herself as being trapped like the woman in the wallpaper, but now she has the courage to try and shake herself free. When the woman writes, “I think that women get out in the daytime! And I will tell you why – privately – I have seen her”. She feels when she is alone in the room she is able to do as she please. “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we have peeled off yards of that paper. “ 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 cant put me back”. The woman is no long trap, by pulling off the wallpaper. In this statement the woman is expression how she has finally taking off her shackles and restraints of her husband by pulling off the wallpaper.
upon her, she is unable to neither use her mind nor express herself. Therefore, every little line, design, or pattern she see in the wallpaper she affixes it to her experiences. In the beginning of the story the narrator emphasis on how the women does not express how she feels. She allows her husband as well as her brother to dictate what is best for her. Her husband has denied her the right to do anything that gives her pleasure, such as whom she can visit, the right to work, and to write, which use to give her great pleasure. The woman’s husband as well as her brother are both physicians who believe she only have o nervous depression. So when the woman states “What is one to do?” (1735) she is clearly – asaying that she is inferior to the men in her life. The woman feels that she does not have the right to question the good doctors of high standards when she herself is only a mere woman, who is experiencing a nervous depression. “It is stripped off- the paper- in great patches all around the head of my bed”, one of those sprawling flamboyant pattern committing ever artistic sin”. (1735) this description of the wallpaper is symbolic to the way the woman feel about her illness. When she talks about the patches being stripped away the woman is describing how her thoughts, emotions, and even her life is being stripped away, “ the patterns of artistic sin”, explains how she wants to do as she please; to let her creative side of her be known. “The front pattern does move- and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it, and she is all the time trying to climb through” (1743) The woman see herself as being trapped like the woman in the wallpaper, but now she has the courage to try and shake herself free. When the woman writes, “I think that women get out in the daytime! And I will tell you why – privately – I have seen her”. She feels when she is alone in the room she is able to do as she please. “I pulled and she shook, I shook and she pulled, and before morning we have peeled off yards of that paper. “ 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 cant put me back”. The woman is no long trap, by pulling off the wallpaper. In this statement the woman is expression how she has finally taking off her shackles and restraints of her husband by pulling off the wallpaper.