Psychoanalytic Lens In The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Perkins Gilman

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is the story about a woman slowly going through depression which causes her to become ill throughout her life due to her husband's authority. An analysis of “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman's through the feminist and psychoanalytic lenses indicates that the need of self control due to the power of the narrator’s husband which causes her to return to a relationship with the wallpaper. Due to this claim, she has lost the relationship with her husband because she was mistreated through her life.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” shows the narrator of the story inferiority to her husband, John. The story is based on the belittlement of women in that era. In Karen Ford’s article, she mentions that the “There can be

The room she was forced to stay in symbolizes her state of mind. “I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted one that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings!” (Gilman 404). Alternatively of wanting to be in the room she wanted to feel welcomed in, the narrator was forced to stay in the nursery for most of her life. She was cramped to a very vexatious room “whose major features [were] ancient yellow wallpaper, bars on the windows, and a huge bedstead nailed to the floor”(MacPike 287). Her nursery she stayed in had symbolized where she stood in society, people considered her as a dependant woman who was unable to take care of the child she had gave birth to. She, herself, was considered as a child because of what her husband John had put her through. He incised the idea of her child behavior until it got into her mind. While spending time inside the nursery, a notice in her behaviors and they way she acted started to form more childish. “John gathered me up in his arms, and just carried me upstairs...and read to me…” (Gilman 409). The husband's behaviors towards the narrator pushes her childlike behavior more. “Color played an important role in Gilman’s life...In her writing, too, she used colors for their symbolism” (Wolter 200). The author

Using the story through the feminist lens, I noticed that there was actually be a deeper meaning it. I realized that the woman was not crazy, but she wished for equality instead. Her husband kept of putting her down and her insecurities did not make any of it better. She wanted to have her own voice in society, and to make decisions for her own. I also realized that when her husband John told her that he loved her, he was doing it for her betterment, he was actually just brainwashing her into doing everything he would say and for him to take control of her life until she becomes a weak person. He was in control of all of her actions which made him very powerful. However, when the narrator takes the role of her husband, he faints having seen his wife taking control over him and he doesn’t like the idea. As I realized what John was deciding what his wife was able to do and not to do in her life, I immediately thought of myself. For example, when I spent many days over the summer looking for a job, and when I finally found a good place to work at, I decided to get that job position that was open and work somewhere. I thought that it would be a good experience for me and instead of wasting my time at home watching television and get bored out my mind, I could