Three Cheers for John
Modern day feminists' enjoy looking into the past to find examples of female oppression. This tactic is employed in the hopes of demonstrating that oppression of their sex by the evil male populous has been going on for decades. One such work that is cited by feminists to showcase just how terrible women were treated in the first part of the twentieth century is Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper." Feminists' are quick to point out that the main character in this story is driven down the path of insanity by her uncaring husband. It is of their opinion that John, the main character's husband, consistently neglects her by keeping her locked away upstairs. Other feminists argue that the main character was not actually insane, rather, she was pushed into a temporary state of delirium as a result of the state of confinement that her husband subjected her to. These same feminists will say that John's consistent misdiagnosis of his wife's condition smacks of incompetence. It is their theory that if the main character were a man during this same period of time, doctors would have treated the condition differently. In other words, men were not diag
She seems to be fine at the beginning of the story. There was nothing that he could have done for her mental deterioration. Nothing that John could have done would have done anything to prevent the inevitability of his wife's transformation into an insane lunatic. Some feminists may argue that John clearly was responsible for the deteriorating condition of his dearly beloved. Again, at the beginning of the story, she remarks rather freely about how she liked to sit on the porch under the roses. Her thoughts and words are testimony to that of a person suffering from extreme boredom. As the story unfolds, her thoughts turn into rather bizarre and nonsensical ramblings about women trapped behind the yellow wallpaper that decorates the room. The first is taken from the characters own mouth, from when she directly states that she "walks a little in the garden or down that lovely lane, [and] sit[s] on the porch under the roses" (The Norton Anthology, p. Of course, the most damning piece of evidence against the theory that John caused his wife's insanity by keeping her locked inside the house reveals itself at the end of the story. John did everything within his power to relieve the everyday stresses of his beloved wife by acquiring the services of a nanny. As mentioned before, this is what some modern day feminists think. Again, the realists' interpretation is extremely different.
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Acceptance Essays
