![]() Consider the story as an early work of feminism. Through this story, she explores the role of women in America at the time. 12 September 2020.2 Author’s purpose Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an American writer, publishing “The Yellow Wallpaper” in 1892. “The Racialized History of ‘Hysteria.’” JSTOR Daily. ![]() In Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” edited by Thomas L. “Selections from Fat and Blood, Wear and Tear, and Doctor and Patient.” 1877, 1872, 1886. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1997. Just as John’s repeated phrases altered the narrator’s mindset so even her own thoughts were strangled and even her own secret diary was changed the women who attempted to step outside of their expected roles as women were labeled hysteric and silenced through insane tactics, one of which includes the rest cure. Referring back to the phrase being analyzed, it can be assumed that those pushing against the walls and “climb through that pattern” (Gilman 12), are women who previously opposed the societal expectations set upon women. John’s standard phrases have been so ingrained in the protagonist’s head that she no longer can finish her own thoughts of opposition. The hyphen earlier can be read an interruption of Gilman’s own thoughts. ![]() Those women who did choose to stray from their womanly duties were symbols of a race suicide (Shreve), and were thus labeled hysteric and given “treatments” meant to make them reengage them in their womanly roles.ĭigging deeper into the hyphen in the middle of this phrase, a trend seen earlier in the short story: “I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus – but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition…” (Gilman 2). ![]() The wallpaper then can become a metaphor for male oppression of women, and the “creeping women” behind the yellow wallpaper can be metaphors for the many women that attempted to move above the societally-determined sanction and stray from what is expected of them hence why they have been “strangled” in the wallpaper. As a well-known physician and large contributor to modern medicine, this use of the rest cure was a significant indicator of the viewpoint of women who stepped out of their socially expected roles during the 19 th century. According to S Weir Mitchell in an excerpt from Wear and Tear, the rest cure is used on women who display themselves as being “unfit for her duties as woman” (Mitchell 110). Throughout Gilman’s story, it is clear the 19 th century treatment of women suffering with mental illness was meant to be a prominent theme, especially considering the protagonist’s husband choosing a rest cure as a primary treatment for his wife. This becomes especially clear in the sentence “But nobody could climb through the pattern – it strangles so I think that is why it has so many heads” (Gilman 12). As the protagonist gains more awareness of the woman behind the wallpaper, she begins to see more faces and figures in the wallpaper as well. Near the end of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, the protagonist begins her descent into madness as she identifies more with the creeping woman. “But nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so I think that is why it has so many heads” Charlotte Perkins Gilman
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