The Yellow Wallpaper
The Yellow Wallpaper
During this day and time, women are seen as an equal to men unlike at the turn of the century, where this was not the case at all. Women stayed home, did household duties and took care of the children until their husbands came home after a hard day's work. Although this is not exactly the case in The Yellow Wallpaper because our main character is going crazy, there is still a significant amount of women degradation happening but in another way there are positive aspects too, therefore many examples should be worthy of discussion. Many passages in this short story help us point out these aspects and I intend to analyse them. They will help support the fact that our main character is being maltreated from one point of view but from another standpoint, the narrator is being well taken care of and this should be taken into consideration.
First of all, within the first few lines there is already an example that John (the husband) is looking down on her because she says "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that." (5). This statement by the narrator tells me that near the end of the 19th century women were still seen as being a couple grades lower than men but according to our narrator she has to expect it because she really has no other choice. John doesn't only laugh at her once but does so another time about the wallpaper. He doesn't agree with her that they should get rid of this ugly wallpaper and that it shouldn't get the better of her. To me, John is uncaring and he doesn't deserve a wife because he treats her as if she were a child or even a stranger. Also it doesn't seem like he's trying to help her get better because he's practically imprisoning her in a lugubrious room in which she is supposed to eliminate her temporary illness.
Another interesting aspect but an obvious one is that John is a physician of high standing and so is his brother, and that the women in this...
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