Gender Roles In The Yellow Wallpaper

Valencia portrays the average housewife and the general unhappiness of married couples. Edgar Derby shows how wars bring out the worst in people, and Bertram Rumfoord is symbolic of the apatheticness of officials who hold power. They are indifferent to how the consequences of their actions affect helpless citizens, and do not view the masses as ‘human’. Vonnegut’s intent in adding these symbolic roles is to deepen the meaning of the novel and to further carry the message of the theme to the reader. Valencia, who epitomizes the average housewife, also represents the unexpressed discontentment of many married couples.

Although Jaimito seems sweet and the perfect fit for Dede, he is quickly criticized. His marriage with Dede becomes bitter, argumentative and abusive. In one instance, he “grabbed her by the wrists and shoved her on the bed,”(176). As well as abusing his wife, he controls her and doesn’t allow her to be too involved in the revolution like her sisters and their husbands are. Throughout the book, Jaimito is controlling his wife's actions and constantly questioning her, which doesn’t cause him to seem like a great husband or even a kindhearted person.

As a part of her treatment John & her brother (who is also a physician) advise her not to use her imagination in any way & rest, so her secret journal entries are the only kind of mental stimulus she has. As the story unfolds the narrator 's mind begins to run wild. She becomes fixated on the yellow wallpaper that is in the old nursery room where she & John sleep. It reaches a point where she imagines a woman is trapped behind this stained horrid wallpaper. Although the exact symbolic representation is arguable, the yellow patterned wallpaper seems to symbolize the role women have in society at this time, because of its focus on gender division & the significant time period it was written in where women 's rights was still a major issue .

The Yellow Wallpaper is considered to fall in the genre of realism because it represents the way life was for women during the nineteenth century. Gilman intentionally tried to make Jane a typical woman of the time period. She is economically dependent on her husband, as she does not work out of the house. She is not allowed to make her own decisions, John will not let her out of bed, even though she wishes to do so; and she is often treated like a child, John gives her a dirty look when she expresses that she is still not well when he believes that she is getting

To cure her, her husband let her stay in a room with nothing to do, just rest. Especially, for the sake of her health, she cannot read or write, which is the favorite thing of her, even she thinks that reading and writing is helpful to her health, but her husband forbids it. The yellow wallpaper of this room so attracted her that she becomes insane at last. In this book, Gilman mostly illustrate how the woman’s lack of freedom both in their mental and emotional in the patriarchal society. The husband in the book is a doctor, but he cannot treat his wife, even make her insane by his fault rest cure treatment.

First of all, her emotions do not show she is psychopathic enough to go crazy and kill her husband. For example, at the beginning of the story she seems quite happy with her husband, looks like she loves him and listens to his orders. The author shows no sign that previously, Mary was a murderer or had a mental disorder. She also takes care of her unborn baby. Second of all, when her husband Patrick told Mary that he will leave her,even though she is a good wife it sounded really “cold” and was careless.

She was aware of the mistreatment by her husband, which ultimately compelled her to get revenge against him by making him faint, as Gilman writes “Now why should that man have fainted? But he did, and right across my path by the wall, so that I had to creep over him every time! (10). Jane in the end breaks, and can no longer tolerate her husbands dominance, she revolts, and manages to get him to faint. Both women had differences in tolerance towards their husbands, as Georgiana was tolerant, and Jane was

Her attempts at tricking the inspector falls short as her own sister and her husband deny her pursuit and disdain her. “…women get strange ideas at times…she is a dangerous and shameless woman” (73). This statement about Aunt Harriet by Joseph Strorm is a prime example of how women are expected to remain detached and dispassionate about their personal, emotional struggles and have no intervention about how she is placed in

“The Yellow Wall-Paper” which was published in the late nineteenth century shows that the women of that time did not have much cultural value. In the story the husband acts more like a father to his wife than a husband. Throughout the story he calls her ‘little girl’ and like a father has rules that must be obeyed. He has locked her up in a nursery room that she hates in a large castle and ordered her not to move from the bed, because she is on a ‘rest cure’ that is supposedly going to help her get over her post-partum depression. Because she is stuck in a room that she despises, she becomes very lonely and even more depressed which causes her to start staring at the wallpaper and slowly become crazy from the isolation.

Mildred’s constant addiction to gadgets represents her denial towards her problems and the little desire she has towards a better life. Her ignorance is another of her great weaknesses since she lives in a world where her feelings don’t matter and is easily influenced by tv and propaganda which explains her obsess towards hair dye and a soap opera family, even when Guy tries to talk to her all she seems able to talk about is her “family”, he tries to talk to her into reading some of the books he has found but she’s just worried that Captain Beatty might show up and “burn the house and the ‘family’” and asks him “why should I read?” “what for?” (34, Bradbury). Mildred doesn’t understand what she’s feeling and therefore prefers little amounts of superficial happiness that only give her joy for a little while, instead of reading and exterminating her ignorance because she’s too afraid to understand what is really happening inside of

Her father cut her off from all social contact and courtship which ruined her life, "that quality of her father which had thwarted her woman 's life so many times" (Faulkner,38). So that there meant she was isolated by her father. She was not able to talk to guys and could not da ate either. When her father past away and was buried her isolation was more noticeable, "after her father 's death she went out very little" (Faulkner,34). At first Emily was not willing to accept that her father was dead, "she told them that her father was not dead" (Faulkner,36) and Emily did that for three days.