Today in Our Society

Alexander 1

Today in our society the vast majorities of women are strong and assertive and in most cases live just as equal to men. However in the late 1800's, it was much different for women. They were dominated and controlled by men and were not treated as equal to them. In Gillmans story "The Yellow wall paper" The narrator which is the character in the reading suffers an extreme transformation. She starts off an innocent, naïve women with very little energy and ends the reading as a strong, assertive but delirious woman. Her transformation was induced due to feelings of oppression, lack of self expression, and isolation. I believe that the narrator represents women and the effects of their oppression in their society.

Prior to the transformation, the narrator had good judgment about things but, they were always disproved her husband John. He never allowed her to offer ideas about her own condition or anything else. John believed that by sending her away and confining her to a home will help her to overcome what they believed to be at that time a nervous condition. On the other hand the narrator mentioned "Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement would do me good." And she say's "John is a physician and perhaps that is why I do not get well faster." That just goes to show that she all along knew that her husband treatment is what is keeping her sick, but she also believes that he is so loving and caring that he only wants the best for her, although in her mind she knows it is wrong.

Oppression by her husband and probably most men in her society is responsible for the narrator drastic change. According to Sari Edestien in the article approaches to teaching

Alexander 2

Gilmans the "Yellow Paper" and "Heland" She writes that the story reveals more fully the joint pressures of genre and gender upon late nineteenth-century writers (Sari, 23). This is symbolized by the home he put her in, the bared windows, and the wallpaper which all facilitated her transformation. The house was like her cocoon where it took place. She was confined to this home isolating her from her friends and family, and what she like to do most which was write.

The bared windows where she once saw a garden old fashion flower's and bushes, was trapping her feelings when traditionally its represents freedom. "I don't like to look out the windows even there are so many of those creeping women" She said. Out the window she did not see what she wanted to see. She only saw other women who were a reflection of herself. She no longer saw the windows as a gateway to make her feel better, only because she cannot enter the other side, literally because her husband won't allow her to. His control over her is what starts igniting her.

"Feminist critic Elaine Hedges wrote in 1973 that the paper symbolizes her situation as seen by the men who control her and hence her situation as seen by herself" (Hedges, 48). This is why I believe that what ultimately set of her metamorphosis was the yellow wall paper in the room she was trapped in. With nowhere to go, her hatred to the wall paper, and nothing to