The Society Of The Victorian Age

4 Pages 1012 Words

Showing their role in society, women in literature are often portrayed in a
male dominated position. Especially in the nineteenth century, women were
repressed and controlled by their husbands as well as other male influences.
“The writings of mid-century women often reveal much about their
perception of themselves” (Rose). In "The Yellow Wallpaper", by Charlotte
Perkins Gilman, the protagonist is oppressed and represents the effect of the
oppression of women in society. “Gilman used the story to illustrate her belief
in the great need for social reform in the Victorian Age and the potentially
crippling effects that lack of opportunity has on women” (Johnson). This
effect is created by the use of complex symbols such as the house, the
nursery room, and the wallpaper which, encourages her oppression as well as
her self expression.
It is customary to find the symbol of the house as representing a secure
place for a woman's transformation and her release of self expression.
However, in this story, the house is not her own and she does not want to be
in it. It represents a prison in which she is trapped. She declares it is
"haunted" and that " there is something strange about the house"(Gilman
195). Although she acknowledges the beauty of the house and especially
what surrounds it, she constantly goes back to her feelings that "there is
something strange about the house"(Gilman 195). Her first impression of the
house almost tells you that the narrator knows of the upcoming
transformation that will take place in the house while she is there. The
location of the house, 3 miles from the nearest village, its slight state of
disrepair symbolizes the narrator’s mental condition as being that of isolation
and segregation.
Another significant setting is the nursery room, “It was a nursery first,
and then a playroom and gymnasium, I should judge for the windows are
barred for little children, and there are ...