The Yellow Wallpaper -- Literary Analysis, Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The psychologically thrilling story of The Yellow wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman explores the dark and twisted aspect of the American society in the nineteenth century. Through the engage of theme, Gilman creatively captures the cultural subordination and struggles women faced on a unvarying basis. The first theme present in the horrific and heart pull story is the subordinate position of women within marriage. The Yellow Wallpaper begins with the tellers wish that her house were haunted like those in which frightened heroines suffer Gothic horrors (DeLamotte 5). However, this wish is in essence to empower herself. The storyteller is already afraid of her economise and is suffering psychologically and emotionally. She desperately wishes for an die hard through fantasy, into a symbolic version of her own plight a version in which she would have a measure of distance and declare (DeLamotte 6). Throughout the text, Gilman reveals to the reader that during the time in w hich the story was written, men acquired the workings role while women were accustomed to working within the boundaries of their woman plain. This gender division meritoriously kept women in a simple state of obliviousness and prevented them from reaching any scholastic or schoolmaster goals. John, the narrators keep up, establishes a treatment for his wife through the assurance of his own superior wisdom and maturity. This narrow minded thinking leads him to hold and control his wife, all in the name of helping her. The narrator concisely begins to feel suffocated as she is physically and emotionally trapped by her husband (Korb). The narrator has zero control in the smallest details of her life and is because forced to retreat into her fantasies... ...at the narrator will possibly be physically restrained or imprisoned at some point when her husband regains consciousness. At that point, he will have no other filling but to send her back to her doctor or a mental instit ution. Nevertheless, the narrators mind will always remain free, emulating the exemption relished by the woman in the wallpaper. Unfortunately, this escape of reality means that the loudspeaker system will never reclaim any sort of rationality. With the deed of dismission the woman in the wallpaper, the narrator unintentionally guarantees the long lasting incubus of insanity.All in all, the heart wrenching and goosebump producing story of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman takes the reader on a psychological rollercoaster ride. Through the alert use of theme, Gilman ingeniously illustrates the struggles women faced during the nineteenth century.