Gender Roles In The Yellow Wallpaper

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Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," is a feminist critique of gender roles in a traditional and conservative society. The story embodies the struggles women generally face under the guise of a patriarchal society, which is exceptionally prevalent throughout. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a tale that follows a woman's descent into insanity after her husband misdiagnosis her and completely disregards her evident post-partum depression. The story depicts a woman in a variety of passive roles which ultimately leads to her madness and downfall that is evitable and her attempts to regain control of her life and sanity. Because of the traditional gender roles that both characters follow, the woman is submissive and compliant, …show more content…
She even goes far enough to personify the wallpaper referring to it as “she.” This serves as a symbol in which the woman starts to identify with the imaginary woman she perceives in the wallpaper. She says that she can see a “strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to sulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design” (Gilman 471). At this point in the story, the woman is a separate entity from the narrator. As her need for escape increases, she begins to relate more with the woman. “The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (Gilman 473). The narrator knows she is being trapped by her controlling husband, on an unconscious level. Her wild imagination projects this knowledge through the woman in the wallpaper. The imaginary woman “shakes the pattern” just as the narrator wishes she could shake herself free from the male dominated controls of society. The narrator projects her feelings and desire for escape onto the imaginary woman and imagines the woman in the wallpaper has become free. She does this to manage her feelings of forever being imprisoned, sort of like a defense mechanism, so she doesn’t have to come to terms with
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