Identity and Independence in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman :: Yellow Wallpaper essays

Although The Yellow Wall-Paper is fiction, it can be consideredalmost like Gilmans autobiography since Gilmans life seemed to parallelher main characters life. What Gilman was trying to express in this workis womens fight for identity and freedom (professional work) whichare stripped from them by marriage and motherhood. (p799) In the story, a woman who just gave birth had some complications which resulted in her socalled hysteria or nervous condition. Shes not allowed to do anythingbut stare at some color wall-paper until she ultimately loses her mind. The narrator, who will be referred to as Gilman for simplicitys sake, isa writer who is unable to write due to her motherhood. I did write fora while in spite of them but it does exhaust me a easily deal- (p801) Itwas this motherhood that brought her illness so she couldnt write. Thisshows how just macrocosm a woman is difficult to have a career. Her husband,John, always tried to keep her in her board without anything to do butre cover from her illness. Without anything to do, especially her writing,Gilman saw this as being held back from becoming her true self. John is a physician, and perhaps ...perhaps that is one cerebrate I do not get wellfaster. (p801) She had to be sneaky about writing or else John would findout. -having to be so dodgy about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.(p801) Because of this prison that she was in, Gilman started to seeimages in the yellow wall-paper that she stared at day-in and day-out. The images she saw were a woman, and then women trapped behind theyellow wall-paper. The woman behind shakes it Sometimes I think thereare a great many women behind... Then in the very bright descry she keepsstill, and the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakesthem hard. (p809) The image of the woman and women is how Gilman feelsabout her and every other woman during this time period. By being a womanand married, she became sick and imprisoned much like her women im ages. The bars that the woman shook are Gilmans motherhood and marriage herfreedom would be her independence from John and her writings. At the endof the story, John faints at the site of Gilman creeping around the