The Main Theme Of The Short Story: The Yellow Wall Paper (Essay Sample)

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Subordination of Women
The book, ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper,' by Charlotte Gilman is about an unidentified woman. This lady becomes mentally depressed after she gives birth to a baby. Despite the fact that her husband John, a health practitioner believes that Jane is mentally ill, Jane thinks that her husband is wrong. John forces the narrator to rest in a particular room with a yellow wallpaper. While in the room, Jane sees as if the woman in the yellow wallpaper is striving to break free. Jane destroys the yellow wallpaper so that she releases the lady. This paper discusses the central theme in the book which is the subordination of women.
In the story, Gilman mainly tries to make the readers understand how men always assume that they have a higher social status than women. He shows how individuals of the middle class used to mistreat women in marriage during the nineteenth-century. During this period, almost all marriage institutions classified women as second-class citizens. Men practiced a gender division strategy that ensured that women remained in ignorance hence preventing their full development. During the period that Gilman wrote this short story, women were not allowed to write because men believed that writing could give them a sense of identity. People feared that allowing women to write would provide them with a type of defiance. Women had few rights during this era: therefore, writing would give them the permission to express their rights. In the book, the narrator says, ‘there comes John, and I must put this away, he hates to have me write a word (Gilman 649)". John believes that he is wiser than his wife: therefore, he thinks that he has the power to decide if his wife can write or not.
The room in which the narrator is in acts as a prison whereby his husband monitors her and ensures that she does not perform intellectual actions such as reading. The woman argues against the spouse's decisions by having a secret diary. However, John finds the diary and destroys it because he thinks that keeping the diary is an act of disobedience towards him. John believes that all women must obey their husband's commands: therefore they must do what their husbands tell them to do even if they know what is good for them.
John treats the narrator as if she is a small child. When she wanted to feel if the lady in the yellow wallpaper was moving, John told her, "What is it, little girl? Don't go walking about like that you'll get cold (Gilman 652)". John believes that he is so superior to his wife that he even thinks that he has the right to control her movements. Furthermore, John does not put her wife's decisions into consideration, and this is evident when his wife's mental condition deteriorates, and she asks John if she can move to another room, but John refuses.
John even turns down his wife's requests when she asks him to repaper the wall so that she stops seeing the movements of the lady on the wallpaper. The author writes, "at first he wanted to remove the paper from the room, but later he said that I was allowing the sickness to control me (Gilman 649)". John does not care that this wallpaper is making her wife crazy and he thinks that he knows what is best for her. Instead of being concerned with his wife's mental condition, John says, “Of course if you were in any danger, I could and I would, but you are better dear, whether you can see it or not (Gilman 652)”.
The narrator is a woman, and this makes her husband not to care about her social needs. He rarely interacts with the narrator as he is rarely at home. While in her room, the narrator says, "John is away all day, and even in some nights when his cases are serious (Gilman 649).” John believes that his issues are more important than his wife’s issues. He is preoccupied with his emotions to the extent that he does not see that his wife's situation is deteriorating.
The author of this short story also uses Jennie who is John’s sister to show the subordination of women in the 19th century. Jennie's central role in the narrator's home is to manage the household. She mostly concentrates on decorating the house and performing kitchen chores. In the 19th century, the society trusted that the only role that women can play in the family is that of handling household chores. Besides dealing the household duties, Jenny unquestionably does what John orders. For example, she decides to monitor the narrator just because John demanded her to do so. Jennie knows that John is going against what the doctor wants for the narrator, but she just obeys John because he is a man.
Paula, in her article, supports the fact that Gilman’s book was striving to portray the subordination of women in the 19th century. Paula writes, "the narrator is forbidden to engage in an ordinary social conversation, her physical argues that the narrator’s husband did not want her to be intelligent and this is why he even forbade her from writing (Treichler).” John even denies the narrator the right to speak truthfully hence forcing her to express her feelings through a journal. Paula even trusts that the woman in the paper also represented women oppression in the 19th century. She explains that the woman in the wallpaper was trying to free herself from a society that denies women their rights.
Feldstein, in his book, claims that the narrator's mental illness resulted from social isolation and the lack of the ability to exercise her rights. He believed that the narrator became ill because she was resisting against her society's beliefs on women. Feldstein argues that the narrator did not accept her insubordination and she fought back by writing a journal despite the fact that her husband did not want her to write. He also writes, “the narrator identifies with other oppressed women as represented in the wallpaper (Feldstein 274). He also believes that the woman in the yellow wallpaper represented women who were also tired of being oppressed by men. Feldstein writes, “Her creeping is a form of resistance and revenge (Feldstein 274).” Lastly, Feldstein trusts that the narrator’s mental illness also represented how the society assumed that women were mad.
Hedges also believes that Gilman mainly tried to show how women were tired of being oppressed by the society in the 19th century. Hedges explains the story as that of a woman who is trying to achieve autonomy in a society which thinks that women are less significant. Hedges also trusts that the narrator's mental illness came into existence because she was trying to fight for her rights (Hedges 156). Hedges explains that the narrator's mental condition worsened because she felt that she did not achieve her rights despite all her efforts. Hedges believes that John represented the society which feared that women might be superior to men if they are allowed to read and write. Furthermore, Hedges discusses that the short story also showed how many societies ...