Feminism And The Yellow Wallpaper

6 Pages 1600 Words

Feminist Reading of “The Yellow Wallpaper”
Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” with intentions of speaking out against the oppression of women. It is clear how the narrator of the story is controlled by her husband, John. She fights for her right to express what she feels throughout the story. Unbeknownst to the narrator though, is the fact she is indeed living in an oppressed world that is controlled totally by her husband. Gilman depicts the narrator in this way to hide any overt statements about the oppression of women by their male counterparts. Gilman was writing in a time when women writers often kept their works from publications and wrote under male pseudonyms. But alas, Gilman’s story is told through the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
Gilman does not give a name to the narrator and we have to refer to her as the narrator or John’s wife. This is the first hint of the oppression of women. We know the husband’s name is John. We know he is a physician and that he has a job in the town. As for the narrator, we know nothing of a profession, which she could have very well been a housewife, and we do not know her name. We do know, though, that she is a writer, for it is through writing she communicates her story.
The second notion of oppression is the power of men in our narrator’s life. Her husband and her brother are both physicians who tell her what she needs is medication and exercise. She is “absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until [she is] well again” (Gilman 1). Although she tells them she is sick, the men dismiss it as a nervous disorder and will not listen to her. Gilman is relating this part of the story to how men “know” they are right and “know” they are not wrong. They will not listen to the narrator when she says she is sick; and, she believes that since both men are prestigious physicians she must do as they say. The narrator is being control...