The Yellow Wallpaper Analysis

Traditionally, women were described in a sense that is dominated by men in literary works. However, Charlotte Perkins Gilman connected the social phenomenon in that time with her personal experience to create a fictional narrative about feminist “The Yellow Wall-paper” which is about an unnamed woman who has postpartum depression and is sent to a house by her husband in order to cue her mental illness, and finally gets mad because of her self-centred and dominating husband. The narrator, a nameless woman in order to symbolize any wife, mother, or woman, is oppressed and clearly represents the significant influence from the oppression of women. Gilman uses symbolism to portray the narrator’s self-expression and the oppression she suffers in the society in the nineteenth century.

In most cases, house is a symbol of security ordinarily, a cozy place where women are in a position to express their ideas and thoughts. For those women in the nineteenth century, this is the part where makes women aware of their own choice and control over their leisure time to life and liberty rights. However, in “The Yellow Wall-paper”, the narrator loses all rights of decision and required to live in an unfamiliar environment where she is treated for her sickness with nothing to do except resting. Notwithstanding, this house is described as “a colonial mansion, a hereditary estate”(Gilman 647), she thinks this is a “haunted house”(647) and “proudly [declares] that there is something queer about