What Is The Theme Of The Yellow Wallpaper

We ll go over the yellow wallpaper summary themes and symbols the yellow wallpaper analysis and some important information about the author.

What is the theme of the yellow wallpaper. There are many themes present in the yellow wallpaper depending on one s own interpretation of the work. It is regarded as an important early work of american feminist literature due to its illustration of the attitudes towards mental and physical health of women in the 19th century. Many find it to be a descent into madness and the causes behind this descent.

The yellow wallpaper is a widely read work that asks difficult questions about the role of women particularly regarding their mental health and right to autonomy and self identity. And you should certainly read it with those themes in mind they re super important and the world is in dire need of gender equality and acceptance of mental illness. Freedom and confinement madness gender literature and writing society and class.

To his credit mitchell who is mentioned by name in the story took gilman s criticism to heart and abandoned the resting cure. The yellow wall paper a story is a short story by american writer charlotte perkins gilman first published in january 1892 in the new england magazine. There s no physical reason for the narrator not to be allowed to write but under her rest cure it is prohibited to her.

The yellow wallpaper is an illustration of the way a mind that is already plagued with anxiety can deteriorate and begin to prey on itself when it is forced into inactivity and kept from healthy work. Alongside its exploration of mental illness the yellow wallpaper offers a critique of traditional gender roles as they were defined during the late nineteenth century the time in which the story is set and was written. The yellow wallpaper themes.

By charlotte perkins gilman. The yellow wallpaper original title. Charlotte perkins gilman was a prominent feminist who rejected the trappings of traditional domestic life and published extensively about the role of women in society and saw the gender roles of the time as horribly stifling.

By tearing it down the narrator emerges from the wallpaper and asserts her own identity albeit a somewhat confused insane one. Her husband is very controlling in the enforcement of her treatment preventing her voice from being heard. The wallpaper s yellow color has many possible associations with jaundiced sickness with discriminated against minorities of the time especially the chinese and with the rigid oppression of masculine sunlight.