The Yellow Wallpaper Misogynistic Analysis

The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story about a woman with a mental illness, who cannot heal due to her husband’s lack of belief. In the story, the narrator undergoes three stages: first, she develops a mental illness resulting from the constrictions of a male-dominated society; second, she deteriorates due to a worsening environment; and finally, she reaches a state of insanity. Ironically, it is this final stage that symbolizes her freedom. Gilman’s main purpose of writing The Yellow Wallpaper is to condemn the misogynistic principles and sexual politics of her time period. There are many details in the story that show that the narrator/wife is the lowest segment in the society of that time period, and they knew it too. In the beginning of the story, she points out the imbalance in her marriage: “John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage” (216). The …show more content…
He is telling her to not use her brain to think of good thoughts, exciting thoughts; because if she does it will lead to “a manner of excited fancies”. This belief that women were unintelligent, or daft was absurd. Also, he speaks of her as he would a child, calling her his “little girl” and saying of her, “Bless her little heart.” He overrides her judgments on the best course of treatment for herself as he would on any issue, making her live in a house she does not like, in a room she detests, and in an isolated environment which makes her unhappy and lonely. Physicians, who actually had little knowledge of the inner workings of the female body, presented complex theories arguing that the womb created hysteria and madness, that it was the source of women’s inferiority. Ministers urged women to fulfill their duty to God and their husbands with equal submission. In indicting John’s patronizing treatment of his wife, the author indicts the system as a whole, in which many women were trapped behind damaging social definitions of the