Candelaria 1
Aeron John Candelaria
March 30 2018
ENG 4U1
Ms. Bucciacchio
“The Yellow Wallpaper”: The Gender Lens
A short story of Charlotte Perkins Gillman, “The Yellow Wallpaper” invokes both caution
and wakefulness for women who were diagnosed with nervous depression and prescribed rest
for recuperation. A tale that was set in an English ancestral hall where the narrator and her
husband, John, spend the rest of the summer to recover on her illness. The purpose appears to
be bleak when her husband which is also her physician, controls her activity and locks her voice
within herself. Within his husbands patriarch approach to cure her illness she loses her own
voice and control over herself. She was subjected to stay in the room where she develops a
certain connection with a strange looking yellow wallpaper. Within her suspicion to the
wallpaper she begun to see a speck that became a blob that became a figure, then she realized
it was a woman caged in that wallpaper. Metaphorically, it is when the woman had been freed
by her, she too frees herself from all the constraints of her husband and the anti-establishment
of woman in the society.
The very base of human relationship is when there is superiority of both sides. The
willingness to listen and the capability to voice out each and every opinion of both woman and
man is what makes relationship truthful and healthy. The story line of “The Yellow Wall paper”
voice out a patriarchal approach, in which the narrator is incapable of expressing her thoughts
and opinions toward society. In page 131, the narrator says:
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You see, he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do? If a physician of high
standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really
nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression,-- a light hysterical
tendency—what is one to do? (131)
A clear notion of control is witnessed in this line. Her husband was being firm on his decision
that she was sick. The narrator seems so pre-occupied by the idea that her husband is right and
did not took a glance in her own thought and understanding regarding the her illness. She was a
woman deprived of her own understanding and aptitude. The narrator’s husband have
controlled her in so many ways. Moreover, her husband’s empathic control over her, she little
by little loses her voice that suppressed her own perspectives and philosophies. Her ability to
write her own thoughts, to voice out her gender identity, and to wander the realm of her own
imagination was taken from her, somehow stolen by the people around her. The narrator then
asserts:
He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction. I have a
schedule prescription for each hour in the day; he takes all care from me, and so I feel
basely ungrateful not to value it more. (132)
Her story encompasses all the burden and solitude of every women that have experienced
ineptitude over the past centuries. Women w...
