The Yellow Wallpaper and Perceptions of Women Today
Immediately the readers witness the narrator as inferior to men, particularly her husband, John. John- an intellectual physician orders her around: To stay in bed, suppress her imagination, and most importantly to discontinue her writing. The narrator is seen to be the shadow of her husband and not the individual of her self. Though she feels writing is the antidote to her illness, she does not say a word. “Never to touch pen…… I went home and obeyed those directions for some three months, and came so near the borderline.
” Her silence consumes her soul to enslavement to the world of man. On the other hand, 21st century woman of today accept their true independence comfortably without the need of a husband to support them. Not without an ease. Back in the twentieth century woman fought to have their rights declared by voicing their opinions in every streets in America. They burned their bras as a point for man that they are more than just a fragile housewife, but an individual. Even now woman struggle everyday to be seen capable of being independent away from the traditional views of what a woman should be.
In the story, the narrator throws the only knowledge she attains to her own freedom, her ability to write, which equalize her to her husband. Woman of current generation pursue education beyond high school into a University (academic institution was seen for man), in order to achieve a higher knowledge and to pursue a career in respectable fields such as medical, law, and politics. However, magnitude of young ladies stray away from the path of knowledge into the road of materialist ideas of magazine covered models, Hollywood celebrities, and reality shows. Women are displayed as sex symbols than a powerful role model. Furthermore, the narrator’s husband advises her to part herself from writing and relax. Similar to the narrator, twentieth and twentieth-first century woman battled and still do to be accepted in a advanced work field that are controlled by sexist males who are threatened by woman’s skills .
They feel that woman will overpower them in income and leadership. Education is the great equalizer, the only lope hole in the traditional minds of males. From the content of the story, the reader can assume that the narrator is struggling from pos-partum depression (from a hormonal chemical imbalance in the body that causes her to act irrationally) in the evidence that she had a child not long. In result, her husband places her in a nursery, a way to get rid of her. Today man sign divorce papers to abandon their wife and child as a way to diminish his responsibilities onto his wife. On the other hand, for woman of twenty-first century, a divorce can be a way to escape the burden of marriage.
For the narrator, her freedom was gained through the loss of her own sanity at the expense of her loyalty and love for her husband.
