Role of Women in Society: Charlotte P. Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a gothic psychological short story and appears to be a normal day to day journal about a young woman’s life struggling with mental health in the 1800s. Throughout the story, her husband, whom is also her physician claims that there is nothing else wrong with her besides her being diagnosed with a minor nervous disorder also known as postpartum disorder. A nervous disorder can be described as any disorder in the nervous system causing abnormalities in the brain and can result in a range of symptoms. Her husband then goes on to treat her with a “rest sure.” How her husband starts her treatment is that the couple moves out to an isolated home to help her get her mind cleared from everything that has been going on in her head and in her life. The husband puts the young woman in this tiny room with terrible yellow wallpaper and grotesque bed, making for an uncomfortable stay. As the days pass on, the yellow wallpaper surrounding them, is something the woman uneasy mind becomes constantly fixated on which ends up making her go insane.

There are many things that could have been done to change the situation that the woman was in. For example, whenever the woman tried to discuss what was happening to her or how she was feeling the husband, John always referred to her as “his blessed little goose”(Gilman 437). She was never taken seriously or given the real care that she truly needed in order to get better for the type of mental illness the narrator had. Since her husband was a psychian, she thought that she was going to be okay and that her situation was going to be resolved because she had that constant reassurance from her husband and even from her brother who was also a psychican as well.

Mental Illness is completely out of one’s self control. Back in the 1800’s mental illness was not carefully looked at and examined like it is in today’s society. Before any treatment people were mostly placed in psychiatric wards and received horrific treatment. According to History Cooperative “Treatments in these asylums, as well as others, included purging, bloodletting, blistering, dousing patients in either boiling or ice-cold water to “shock” them, sedatives, and using physical restraints such as straitjackets” (Foerschner). The narrator was unpretentiously a product of the time period. Her husband assigned her bed rest where she was unable to do any physical work, read, write, or anything else. Limiting her from really doing anything at all.

The room where the woman was placed in was possibly used to represent the way eighteenth century and nineteenth century people viewed the women population. The nursery contained barred windows as the narrator describes, which can be viewed as the social, temperamental, prison women during that era were kept in. “He said that after the wallpaper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on”(Gilman 437) . Woman in this time period really had no say for themselves. The narrator identifies the woman in the wall and we as readers understand that her subconscious is more aware of her imprisonment then her conscious mind is, even though her conscious mind still continues to believe that John, her husband still wants the best for his “darling.”(Gilman 440).

Woman during that time period has specific roles. The woman were trapped in their homes and would only do basic chores and duties. They were home keepers, house wives, and wives for their whole entire family. They would take care of the children, and their husbands. Woman ultimately had no control over their own lives. Socially, women were unequal to their men, some would compare this to slavery.As stated in UK Essays,” Everything was entirely controlled by the men in the society. First, their fathers and brothers would control them when they are still young and when they are married, their husbands would finally control them” (Bakken & Farrington, 2003, p. 327). Even though the narrator needed more treatment and care taking then was given she really had no choice due to the limited amount of freedom she had as a woman during that time. Ultimately it was the husbands way or no way. That is why the husband kept on ignoring the narrators problems, even though there was a much bigger picture to the ongoing situation. This short story showed the parting of genders had the effect of keeping women in a “childish” state of bewilderment and stopping their development as an independent woman. Since John had the higher ranking because of him being male it leads him is underestimate and dominate his wife, all while trying to “help” her. The narrator is unable to help herself without being rude or disloyal to her husband if she were to stand up for herself. The narrator was so beaten down and was basically told to ignore her own feelings because he knew what was best for her. Woman have been suppressed in society for a very long time and even it still continues in some places around the world today there are women still suffering from this kind of treatment and they feel powerless.

Cite this page