The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (Essay Sample)

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The Yellow Wallpaper
Written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story whose setting is in America during the 19th century. It is basically a narration by a woman whose husband is a doctor and who is also treating her for an ailment he refers to as nervous breakdown. She is confined to a room upstairs of a house her husband has rented for them to spend their summer break. The story portrays the effect of this confinement on the mental health of the narrator and her subsequent plunge into psychosis. The patterns on the room's wallpaper make her obsessed hence the inspiration behind the story's title. This paper explains the reason as to why I think that Gilman wanted to suggest that generally men are emotionally weaker compared to women.
The text's main theme is women's subordination in marriage. Women are portrayed as being powerless and dominated by their husbands. The narrator who happens to be the protagonist in this case is a young middle class lady suffering from depression brought about by her marriage as well as her illness. As she is confined with all other family members also supporting the move by her husband, she deeply starts to internalize the society's perception of a woman in marriage and in the community at large she becomes more anxious and desperate leading to insanity.
In the text, during the final day in the rented house, John doesn't return home and stays with a patient overnight. At the house Jennie, John's sister who happens to also be their housekeeper is left looking after the narrator but she declines. Meanwhile the narrator completely obsessed by the wallpaper thinking that in it is a woman trapped in it trying to flee, she takes the opportunity to tear the paper apart so as to rescue the woman. When John returns he finds her creeping and circling the walls and when she sees him she proclaims that she is free at last and it is at this point that John faints.
The narrator who is newly married is confined and restricted from writing. Clearly being dominated upon for long makes a person suffer emotionally and they are likely to either rebel or get used to. In this case a woman had to obey her husband at whatever cost. The fact that the woman is still strong though men