Impression Of Women Exposed In The Yellow Wallpaper

Pg 4. “I am outcast” Melinda mentally doesn’t want to speak so she can avoid all emotional confrontation Pg.28 “My throat squeezes shut”. Melinda’s silence slowly erodes her self esteem and leads to depressive behaviors. In the novel Speak the author uses the protagonist Melinda, to teach the reader the importance of verbal expression. Melinda refuses to speak about an event that occurred in her life; therefore, her classmates cannot show empathy toward her.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is a story about a woman’s struggle to be heard in a society working against her. The narrator has been diagnosed with “nervous depression” (648), and her physician husband decides to take her to a mansion to help her recover; her recovery also involves not participating in any activity that might stimulate her mind, like writing. The narrator describes the house as having “hedges and walls and gates that lock” (648), and the room she has to stay in has bars on the windows, almost like a prison. The narrator also points out the hideous wallpaper, and makes many references to it throughout the story. This wallpaper symbolizes much more than horrid design; it is a symbol of the narrator’s, and other

He actually was concerned about his wife’s condition. As being a doctor he thinks that whatever he is doing to his wife is for her own good. It is clear that he has good intentions for his wife, but the writer is telling her readers that attitudes of the men toward women that were established in their minds by their society. Until the women’s movement the men didn’t even know that their behavior was considered cruel. John just wanted his wife to get out of the depression by locking her away, and if you look at the story at the end she did came out of her depression because she lost the touch of reality and in her mind she was trying to save another woman from the yellow wallpaper.

They knew her father had driven away any man from becoming close to her, and they just thought to themselves, “ poor Emily” (32). The townspeople never consider her to be a crazy woman, not even when she claimed her father wasn't dead, and kept the body in her house. They all make up excuses for Emily because they felt sympathy for her, and they kept on just saying poor Emily. The narrator in The Cathedral did not want anything to do with Robert because he was a blind man. He thought they would not have anything to bond over anything, and all he knew about him was what his wife told him.

When dissecting the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper”, she admits that her husband is controlling and clearly states her dislike of his actions, but doesn’t do anything about it. Why do both women let their husband tell them what to do, no matter what negative effects will be a product of the decision that their husband made? A big part of their submissiveness has to do with gender roles during the time that the stories were written. All women before the late 20th century were expected to be submissive to their husband no matter what. They were asked to do things with their husband’s best interest in mind.

Her parents go as far to ask her why she is silent. She kept her secret so long that she now views it as a second nature to be quiet. Resentment and hate are two very strong words usually not used to describe friends. Her relationship with Heather turns sour when Heather decides that the depressed girl with a bad reputation cannot be her friend. Melinda cannot even start over with new friends.

John believes that his wife needs to get better from a nervous condition, so he takes her out to a country house to recover. He is often condescending to her and her needs, and whenever he does talk to her it is usually about his own problems. Furthermore, he does not permit her to do anything that involves work or creativity not even to write. The narrator writes in a secret diary as to provide any form of freedom and creativity that she desires as a human. John eventually finds the diary and destroys it, and John confines the narrator to a room with a yellow wallpaper that the narrator despises.

Misogyny and sexism are problems that have been going on for hundreds of years, women have been belittled and ignored by men which makes them feel alone. In this story the narrator moves to a summer home with her husband, who is also her doctor, and her child, who she is not allowed to see. According to her husband in order for her to get well she can not do anything, including working and writing, but she still continues to write in secret which

Berry, in the Feminism, the Body, and the Machine, makes an argument about what he believes the feminist, who are against his paper about not needing a computer, are missing when they discuss marriage: “marriage as a state of mutual help, and the household as an economy.” I agree. In his article about the computer, Berry mentioned that his wife helped him to type up his ideas and gave him feedback, which frustrates feminist because they find this act to be exploitation without knowing all the details. Within all of their complaints, Berry noticed that all the feminists were frustrated that his wife was not being exploited, was not allowed to find her own employment outside of the home, and was being subservient to him. There did not understand the state of mutual help within a marriage. Berry also explains that many feminists nowadays dream of a marriage that looks more like “an intimate ‘relationship’ involving (ideally) two successful careerists in the same bed, and on the other hand a sort of private political system in which rights and interests must be constantly asserted and defended.” The household is not a full economy, it is focused on consumption.

One theme that has played throughout the novel is freedom ("The Awakening"). Edna wants to find freedom because she feels trapped in her life. Edna Pontellier wants to know what it is like to live outside of being a wife and a mother. Edna tasted a little bit of freedom from her children whenever they went to Iberville. To gain freedom from her husband, she refuses to have sexual relations with him, and she abruptly stopped her Tuesday obligations of meeting people at the house which made him furious.