Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Ideal Women In The Yellow Wallpaper

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In the beginning of the story, Gilman incorporates a character who has convinced herself that she is living in a perfect marriage when in fact it is quite the opposite. In the story, along with her marriage, the woman becomes obsessed with patterns, beginning to criticize and become sceptical about every pattern. The women believes “the color [of the wallpaper] is repellent, almost revolting, a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow turning sunlight.” (2) The character has altered her body from a once lustrous to now grotesque. Gilman uses the term “faded” as a metaphor to represent the way John diminished her true personality and rather created his ideal women. The wallpaper is not only symbol of her mental state but also …show more content…

The woman was trapped in a barred, dirty room, imagining that she is locked up. Along with the thought that she must stay in that room, as her husband demanded, the wallpaper dominated her thoughts and made her pull “off most of the paper, so you can’t put me [her] back!”(9) After days of interpreting and thorough investigation of the women behind the bars creeping around, Gilman finally creates a direct association between her and the wallpaper for the first time in the book. The wallpaper is symbolic of how the woman would always have to creep around their husbands and if they wanted to be free they must be stripped of their privileges. Gilman writes, “you can’t put me back” to give personality to the character she has created. The woman is crazy yet so powerful. Unlike many women, she was able to break away from the ideals of marriage, and free/liberate herself from the nightmare she was living in. Though it seemed like she was incapable of making “proper” decisions she knew what was best for herself. The character blatantly comes out and says “you” meaning John was the reason that she was imprisoned in his “game.”. The irony stems from how she always would blame herself for anything she felt she did wrong, but now blamed the cause for her problems, being John. Though she may have not won overall as she ended

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