The Yellow Wallpaper Essay Example

Introduction

According to Gilman (2015), The Yellow Wall Paper is a short story that was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. This short story mainly focuses on the attitude towards the mental as well as the physical health of women during the 18th century. The short story also focuses on how the women have been viewed by the society in the past years as well as currently.

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Society's View of Women: Past and Present

The story further shows the constraints that have been placed on the women on the society in the previous years and currently. How women are being viewed by the society currently in still the same as in the past. For example, women are always being viewed to be vulnerable, and they cannot stand a tough situation.

Most men view women as mentally weak and fragile. Therefore they should be under them always. Also, in previous years, women were not supposed to undertake a role that was dominated by men. This issue is still the same as there certain roles that are still considered to be for men such as being military officers despite the few numbers of women that have enrolled. The other issue is that in the past years, women would be denied to write. This issue has slightly changed in that women are now being accepted to write because they have gained some rights.

Literature as a Reflection of Society

This issue shows that there is a connection between literature and society. In this case of literature, the story was used whereby the characters showed the kind of issues that the society undergoes. For example, this story has shown the kind of oppression women experience in the society where they are being viewed as inferior human beings. This issue is evident in with the society whereby men have always dominated over women. Women cannot take up some of the roles that are considered for men.

Symbolism of the Yellow Wallpaper

This story has used the symbolism which is the yellow paper to explain certain aspects. The yellow element is one of the symbolic elements that has been used is the yellow paper. The yellow paper has been used to symbolize the narrator's life, as well as the women, live in certain ways (Golden 2013). The relationship between the narrator and the yellow wallpaper seems to grow stronger as the story continues. The yellow paper has been used to represent various ideas that pertain to the feminists One of the ways that the images from the tallow paper related to the narrator's life is that it represents old foul things.

The second example is that the yellow paper is used to represent the smell. When the narrator thinks of the yellow image, it reminds him of the awful smell. The other aspect is that the yellow image leaves the smears on the skins whenever and individual touches, The images on the yellow paper represent the women lives as it is used to beautiful things. Women are known to like beautiful things that has been presented by the yellow image.

Conclusion

The story seems to be breaking from the pattern of my life due to several reasons. The first way is that there is no way that the yellow image can be used to free a woman who has locked herself in the house (Gilman, 2015). Instead, the woman is expected to free herself. The other way that this story seemed to break from my life was when the narrator claimed that when a person touches the yellow wallpaper, it will leave its smears on the skin of anyone who tried touch it.

References

Gilman, C. P. (2015). The yellow wall-paper. Penguin UK.

Golden, C. J. (2013). Charlotte Perkins Gilman's the yellow wall-paper: a sourcebook andcritical edition. Routledge.