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Vickeys Yellow Wallpaper Essay

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60 views3 pages

Vickeys Yellow Wallpaper Essay

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api-407728919
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Ho 1

Vickey Ho

Angus

AP Literature

24 October 2017

Word Count: 801

Prompt #1: Choose a character from prose fiction of recognized literary merit and write

an essay in which you (a) briefly describe the standards of the fictional society in which the

character exists and (b) show how the character is affected by and responds to those

standards.

Women’s Innate Inferiority in Society

“John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage,” remarks the narrator as

she writes in her diary secretly during the physical and mental confinement induced by her

husband (Gilman 1066). “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, portrays the

unequal relationship of the narrator and her husband through the rigid roles women and men play

in a marriage. During the nineteenth century, because of men’s superiority in a relationship,

women were deprived of any meaningful activity, purpose, or self-definition to express

themselves. Women lived behind the shadows of men, having their thoughts and opinions

ignored by society. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator develops a growing dementia

influenced by her innate inferiority to her husband and her inability to express her creative

impulses. Because the narrator undergoes the rest cure treatment prescribed by her husband,

which deprives her of an intellectual and expressive outlet, her mind becomes confused and

childlike leading to her obsession with the pattern on the wallpaper. Through the narrator’s
Ho 2

response of society’s standards in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman demonstrates that one can

be destroyed by their unfulfilled desire for self expression.

The narrator’s inferiority in her marriage drives her mentality into a psychotic journey

which she unknowingly embarks. Because the narrator indisputably follows her husband’s

impractical judgement to her serious medical condition, she inwardly questions, “if a physician

of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing

the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is

one to do?” (1066). Because of his role in a male dominated society, the narrator’s husband holds

a powerful, authoritative voice in which urges her to be passive and not question his judgement.

Although her husband, a physician, claims that the narrator needs to be put on a rest cure

treatment, the narrator responds, “I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition

and more society and stimulus—but John says the very worst thing I can do is think about my

condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad.” (1067). The narrator’s suggestion of her

own medical condition and treatment gets ignored by her husband, therefore, placing her in an

inferior position to voice her opinion. Since men have the upperhand in a marriage, the narrator

internalizes her husband’s authority and begins to think the thoughts her husband provides her.

The narrator suppresses her own thoughts to suit her husband, therefore, keeping the expectation

of the roles of women in a marriage. However, since the narrator begins to consciously question

her husband’s authority, she decides to focus on the house instead of her situation, leading to her

journey of madness and obsession.

In order to stimulate her mind, the narrator hallucinates a trapped women inside the

patterned wallpaper in her room which ultimately symbolizes the structure of family, medicine,

and tradition in which the narrator finds herself trapped. As the narrator’s obsession with the
Ho 3

pattern of the yellow wallpaper worsens, she discovers a woman hidden inside the wallpaper.

When seeing the women in the wallpaper, the narrator postulates, “she is all the time trying to

climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern.” (1075). The pattern the narrator

mentions figuratively describes the domestic pattern of women’s roles in which no escape is

possible. As a wife, the narrator follows a strict, monotonous lifestyle to please her husband,

however, falls into madness as her intellectual power becomes repressed due to society’s

standards of women. Because of the narrator’s feeling of confinement by society, she tears down

the wallpaper to free the women trapped. After releasing the women, the narrator remarks that

the women trapped was herself and questions, “I don’t like to look out of the windows even—

there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out

of that wall-paper as I did?” (1077). The narrator realizes the large amount of women trapped to

play the role of the standard wife. Unfortunately, by going into a demented state, the narrator

was finally able to free herself from her own personal wallpaper.

Given the expectations society implements on women in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the

narrator develops an inferiority complex and becomes unable to express her thoughts. Because

the narrator acts passively to her husband’s confinement, she develops a childish state of

ignorance. Furthermore, she retreats into her obsessive fantasy of the wallpaper in her room to

exercise the power of her mind. Gilman demonstrates the reality of denying women the ability to

express themselves and their response to escape the damaging social standards of womanhood.

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