Free At Last
When a reader first reads The Yellow Wallpaper it appears to be a story of a young woman suffering from post pardum depression that slowly ends in the total loss of reality. However, understanding that Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an early feminist, and her writings share a common theme that women do not have an equal human status in society, the story takes on a whole new meaning. The author's creative use of symbolism in The Yellow Wallpaper allows the reader an inside look of a young woman's struggle to free herself from society's "norm". The author's use of setting and symbolism perfectly represents the male dominant society in the Victorian era that believed a women's place was in the home. The author carefully constructed her sentences and symbols to produce a picture of arrogant and creepy male oppression.The story opens with the young woman describing the house as a "colonial mansion, a hereditary estate, I would say a haunted house, and reach the height of romantic felicity-but that would be asking too much of fate!" (168). The author uses this symbolism to describe the different roles a woman played. The colonial mansion describes her as a wife and a hereditary estate that of a mother. The haunted h
It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others" (170). In other words, no wonder most women hated marriage and even though she loved her husband, she herself would come to hate it if she continued to allow her husband to suppress her creativity. The young woman tells the reader "it creeps all over the house. The formless figure represents women who are forced to the background, a mere shadow of men, by male dominance. Even outside her home she can't escape the effects of male dominance, it's all around her. She slowly gains the courage to tear way from male dominance and live the kind of life she wants by pulling of the paper. It would not be easy to break through the barrier since men would not so easy give in to equality. In every aspect of her duties as a wife and mother her husband and society dominate and oppress her. The young woman also states that there is a kind of sub-pattern and "in the places where it isn't faded and where the sun is just so-I can see a strange, provoking formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about that silly and conspicuous front design" (173). She begins to tear away at the paper piece by piece gaining confidence with each piece removed. Even when I go to ride, if I turn my head suddenly and surprise it-there is that smell!" (177). Women were thought to be property and treated like children. It is the wallpaper, though, that is the focal point of the story, and it holds within it many descriptive symbols for the creepy discrimination and oppression of women. It trapped a woman in a role of being submissive! and dominated.
Common topics in this essay:
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Perkins Gilman,
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,
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effects male,
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Acceptance Essays
