Essay on Condemnation of a Patriarchal Society in Yellow Wallpaper

Condemnation of a Patriarchal Society in The icteric paper Charlotte Perkins Gilman was crafty. Taken at face value, her short work, The Yellow W onlypaper, is simply the daybook of a woman going through a mental breakdown. The paper itself is the arbitrary object on which a troubled mind is compulsively fixated. The fact that Gilman herself suffered from a nervous breakdown makes this interpretation seem kind of a viable. This explanation is, however, dead wrong. The wallpaper is not merely the object upon which she obsesses. The craziness that overtakes the fabricator is not rooted in any nervous inconvenience oneself that her husband diagnoses. The wallpaper is actually meant to represent a mould into which all women be supposed to fit. The insanity is rooted in the narrators inability to downfall easily into that mould. Gilmans verbal descriptions of the wallpaper are really eloquent delineations of the restrictions and constraints placed upon women. In short, the w allpaper is what all proper women are supposed to be the narrator is one woman who is unable to adapt and, hence, she becomes a lunatic. The narrators first description of the wallpaper puts forth most plainly what the nature of women is believed to be dumb enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to evermore irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a dinky distance they . . . destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions (Gilman 4-5). Initially here, women are render as confusing objects so confounding that they are always pestiferous and yet curious enough to demand study or scrutiny. Upon nevertheless examination, women are then found to be lame uncertain curves so full of contradictions they ... ...f the wallpaper and towards schizophrenia. It is easy to see how someone could misinterpret what Gilman was attempting to enunciate in The Yellow Wallpaper, but if you take into account her other books (which are clea rly feminist), her intentions become more apparent. She obviously uses the wallpaper as a medium to expose the constraints that were placed upon women in the 19th century. Her attitude towards these restrictions is quite apparent from the narrators account of the wallpaper and her subsequent insanity from overexposure to it. She despises the general look at of women and of their mental capabilities. This work lashes out at a patriarchal societys picture system and, the funny thing is, not many of the patriarchs noticed. Work Cited Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. 1892. Alexandria, VA Orchises Press, 1990.