The Yellow Wallpaper: Feminist Viewpoint - Essay Example

In what amounts to a house-arrest by her husband, the woman’s condition steadily descends toward psychosis due to lack of variety and distraction in the bed-room existence. For example, “the character becomes increasingly perplexed by the garish color and the intricate patterns of the wallpaper all around her. She begins to see distorted shapes, eventually identifying a woman trapped behind the paper fighting to get out. The story ends with the narrator's husband discovering his wife maniacally circling the bedroom, surrounded by the tattered shreds of paper she has torn from the walls.

He faints at the sight.” (USA Today, 2010, p.4) The rest of the essay will present the feminist interpretation of this important piece of American women’s literature. During the feminist movement of early twentieth century, many feminist scholars were up in arms against the gross injustice depicted in the story. The inequalities prevalent in patriarchal American society of late nineteenth century is pointed at and criticized. The insensitivity and high-handedness of healthcare professionals, especially psychiatrists, is also highlighted.

Since Gilman drew the material for the story from her own experiences in getting cured of depression, her interaction with the famous nervous diseases specialist Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell is relevant for the discussion. As one of the many physicians who debated ‘the woman question’, he “defended the notion of significant differences between the sexes and argued that an epidemic of neurasthenia, or nervous exhaustion, was rife among women who attempted to exceed their natural limits. He recommended a "rest cure" in which the patient was not allowed to read, write, feed herself, or talk to others--or, as Charlotte described it: "Live as domestic a life as possible .

and never touch pen, brush, or pencil as long as you live."” (USA Today, 2010, p.4) The feminist grievance with respect to the prognosis of the condition lies in the fact that the depressed woman saw recuperation in totally different terms. For example, instead of spending time within the bounds of four walls, she felt an active social life would lift her out of the mental morose. This Charlotte Gilman masterpiece challenges traditional notions about gender that excluded them from mainstream political and intellectual life.

It also questions how medical and scientific experts drew on notions of female weakness to justify inequality between the sexes. In Gilman’s own life, she was discouraged from pursuing a career to preserve her health. Hence the authorial voice is both autobiographical as well as generally representative of women of the era. (Delashmit & Long, 1991, p.32) Gilman lived at a time when society was getting torn by two contradictory ideologies – True Womanhood and Women’s Rights. Through her works (including The Yellow Wallpaper) she firmly sied with the cause of women’s rights.

She “stood for the potentialities of American womanhood and struggled to free herself from true to free woman. As a woman and as an author, she perceptively analyzed the most basic conditions under which -women live out their lives and developed her seminal ideas: the crucial necessity for women to have careers outside the home; the ironclad oppression of patriarchal culture; the