The Yellow Wallpaper :: essays research papers

We moldiness Creep to be Heard     Its 200am and I cannot sleep. I toss and turn term the question, Why didnt you stand up for yourself? keeps playing over and over in my chief. The picture in my mind of a subjugated woman who feebly attempts to fight against feminine conquest and her impending insanity is vivid and disturbing and continues to slap against the recesses of my mind with an godforsaken hand. What was Charlotte Perkins Gilman attempting to convey to her readers when she wrote The Yellow Wallpaper and created the characters of the narrator, her husband tail end, Mary and her sister-in-law Jennie? Obviously, in an hypertrophied version of her own experience with post-partum depression and its prescribed rest bring around, Gilman speaks of a world in which the female is agonistic into a government agency of the submissive counterpart to male dominance. In the following pages, I get out describe how Gilman has effectively created characters tha t draw us into their view of control, dominance and thwarted silence against imprisonment in a paternalistic society, and how we ar minded(p) a view into a perfectly healthy mind that goes awry.     To capture with, Gilman created the narrator as a nearly anonymous identity we go to sleep her only as can buoys wife. This power imbalance extends to early(a) areas of their relationship. John dominates her in a progressively patronizing manner. His character is displayed as strong, practical and stereotypically masculine and he seems skeptical of her seemingly weak, feminine condition. John diagnoses her problem, and prescribes the rest cure he believes she needs. The narrator has no say in her condition, and when she attempts to speak her mind, he treats her like a child and makes light of her voice. John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that (An Introduction to Fiction 572) which illustrates the role women are expected to play and accept in a marria ge. Another primary(prenominal) function Gilman gave of Johns control over the narrator is his inhibiting of her piece of music. Although she believes writing would help her condition, as Im sure Gilman did, John insists it would only debilitate her ailment further. He stifles her creativity and intellect, forcing her into the role of the submissive wife. She is forced to hide her writings, which frustrate her more I did write for a while in spite of them but it does exhaust me a good minthaving to be so sly about it, or else meet with toilsome opposition (572).