The Yellow Wallpaper Feminist Analysis

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In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman, tells the story of a woman who is trapped within her own life. The narrator, which is the woman in the story, reveals her yearning to break free from the shackles placed upon her from her husband, John. This thought is supported by the narrator’s observation of a world apart from her own, she roughly shows throughout the story by keeping a daily journal that shows almost immediately her depression and her slipping sanity. In this time period, women were oppressed not only by their husbands but also by other male figures in their lives. The narrator’s husband, John, deliberates he knows what his wife desires and needs are, thus he deems that seclusion and confinement will cure her mental illness. In modern society, the color yellow is associated with sickness or weakness, so the name “Yellow Wallpaper” could represent the narrator illness or it symbolizes man’s oppression of the female gender. Considering this,…show more content…
This triumph showed that men did not know women as they thought they did. This apparently shows with the narrator’s husband John. For example, when John places her in this room, which used to be a “nursery”, and denies her to change rooms because of the grotesque yellow wallpaper it shows that John thinks he knows best and being isolated and confined with restrictions would cure her illness. With this in mind, the narrator is imprisoned in her room with an inability to do anything strenuous which eventually leads her to associate herself with the woman in the wallpaper who is behind bars. Once she frees the woman behind the wallpaper in some sense she liberates herself from the restraints that have been placed upon her. In some ways, by going insane it has finally allowed her to express herself, voice her concerns, and no longer agonizing over being isolated and confined. Some perceive this feat as a triumph rather than
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