The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Abstract
           The narrator of this story is in an unstable mental health state, so her husband has advised her to sleep and not do much. They are renting a house for three months and there is one room that the narrator is fascinated by and she's thinks it was a nursery. In this room there is yellow wallpaper which the narrator she struggles to find peace with so everyday she analyzes the paper while her husband is at work. As she later discovers there are women trapped behind the paper trying to get, so she frees them.In the end those women represent the narrator herself and how she's been trapped by her husband in a sense.


Journal

            While reading “The Yellow Wallpaper” it came across to me that there are definite gender roles shown. The narrator is convinced that she is mentally ill and is not capable of doing anything else. She believes this is true because her husband who is a physician told her so. He told her she must not do much activity during the day and she must sleep as much as possible. This is the stereotypical role of a female that stays home. She just sits around and every once in a while will clean or do something active. I don’t understand why Charlotte Perkins Gilman would write about the woman’s role stereotypically when she herself was a feminist. I think this story shows no feminism because the narrator is being controlled by her husband, ans she isn’t independent at all.

In this story the husband, John, is the supporter. He is a physician and helps others with their ailments. This shows the stereotypical role of a male, to be the supporter. This is the one whole provides the money for the women to buy and get what they need to raise a family. The male figure is suppose to be strong and not afraid of anything. This is shown in the story when the narrator explains that she must always be with John otherwise she gets nervous and begins not feeling well. I think this shows how the male figure is represented in the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”. Again I find it hard to understand that the main supporter in this story to be a role just because she was a feminist writer, and she strongly believed in feminism.

            By the end of the story the narrator becomes free from her life of being trapped. She is finally able to do what she wants and not have to be nervous about it. This is represented when the narrator tears all the yellow wallpaper off the walls. She does this because she claims that there were women behind the wallpaper creeping around and they were trapped. In all actuality this is the life the narrator was living. She was trapped in her house wanting to free herself, but couldn’t because her husband kept and close eye on her at all times of the day.