The Idea of Trapped Women in The Yellow Wallpaper, The Story of an Hour, and The Awakening

As technological advances continue, gaming becomes a favorite hobby to more and more people, especially to the youth of our generation. So what would happen if ideas were put in these games that instilled false, masculine ideas into the minds of small boys. Well this is exactly what is happening today with newer and newer games coming out. Just as our teachers in school have a great deal of influence our character, games do as well, and these thoughts meant to be instilled in the minds of young children are more often than not detrimental to how they think. These games instill the same ideas presented in recent books that we have read, that women can not do anything, and must have everything done for them by men.

As in most video games today, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, “The Story of an Hour” and “The Awakening” all showed women that were trapped. These women were trapped by their husband who made every decision for them as they felt that they knew better than the women themselves. This idea seems to have been highly contributed from the ideology shown from “Cult of Domesticity”. In the Cult of Domesticity, one of the four ideals was domesticity. This gave women specific “true rights”, saying that they could have none other than the ones given. It went on to say that women’s tasks should only be wifely duties and childcare, and that “Women remained in the home, as a kind of cultural hostage” (The Cult of Domesticity). This is the ideology that were in the stories, as well as shown in the games of today; that women were cultural hostages. The same ideas that we would find radical today if reading them on paper are showing up in games that children are playing today, and for some inexplicable reason, it does not matter.

So as gaming continues and evolves, more and more children will be raised with beliefs that do not hold true in the real world. Young women will be reduced to nothing more than a princess being held captive, waiting for a knight to come and rescue them. Young men will grow up thinking that they are superior to women, with the thoughts that the only reason women are the world is to supply for them. With these thoughts, we will be reduced to exactly what John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor fought against more than 200 years ago, and is that a world people would want to live in?

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