Imprisonment of Women Exposed in The Yellow Wallpaper

Imprisonment of Women Exposed in The Yellow Wallpaper When asked the question of why she chose to write The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman claimed that experiences in her own life dealing with a nervous condition, then termed melancholia, had prompted her to write the short story as a means to try and save other people from a similar fate. Although she may have suffered from a similar condition to the narrator of her illuminating short story, Gilmans story cannot be coined merely a tale of insanity. Insanity is the vehicle for Gilmans larger comment on the atrocities of social conformity. The main character of The Yellow Wallpaper comes to recognize the inhumanity in societys treatment of women, and in her†¦show more content†¦The home as a place of comfort does not exist for the narrator; companionship with her husband is lost. Her only real conversations occur on paper, as no one else speaks to her of anything other than her condition. She is stripped of her role as a wife, robbed of her role as a mother, and is r educed to an object of her husbands. John has placed his wife in a prison. The disturbing stained and yellowed wallpaper is used, faded and repulsive. The color is one that is unwelcoming, uncomfortable, and uneasy; its color mirrors the narrators relationship with her husband, and ultimately, with herself. The narrator is uncomfortable and anxious in the barred sulfur colored room where she is fussed over by her husband. John preens his wife, his possession, making the narrator draw further and further away from him. She realizes that her husband lacks the understanding that she craves. This is emphasized as John refuses to accept his wifes condition; John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no reason to suffer, and that satisfies him (248). As the narrator begins to recognize herself as her husbands caged belonging, she becomes more attached to the symbol of the wallpaper. 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