How women are presented in the short story “The yellow Wallpaper”?

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*How women are presented in the short story*

"The yellow Wallpaper"

In the short story "The yellow wallpaper" women are presented very differently as in comparison to today.

The woman in the story has been brought away on a so called holiday to an old house so that she can rest and in her husbands eyes possibly be cured. When they arrive he takes her up to the room that he thinks is the most suitable for her. She gets no say at all in which room she is to stay in. This shows that at this time the man chooses things for the women without the woman even having a say in the matter. She says "I don't like our room one bit" showing that she doesn't like the choice that her husband made. Her husband is a doctor and so is her brother. They know that she is sick and tell her to rest and not to do any writing or any kind of stimulating activity. This is depriving her of what she likes doing best. She thinks that what her brother and husband tell her, she should do. She doesn't want to disobey her husband because she thinks that he is doing all these things in her favour. He says she is not to stir without his command. He thinks he is being caring but he is holding her down.

When she says things that may question his beliefs or he thinks she shouldn't be saying because she is a woman then he laughs at her. He does it so often that when he does it she is expecting it. She gets used to it. When she tells him things about how she feels about her illness he tries to explain everything with a scientific explanation. He has no use of emotion in his replies to her.

She disagrees with the men in her life but she feels ashamed of it. She feels ashamed of her writing and her painting because of what the men in her life are telling her what she should be. Her husband is the dominant figure in her life. She thinks that she has to do everything according to what he says. She doesn't want to disobey him. She thinks that he has done so much for her but really he is keeping her down and forcing his thoughts on her. She blames herself for her condition also because of what John is telling her.

The room that she is in has bars on the windows and rings on the walls. The wallpaper is a repulsive yellow color. The room was once used for a nursery for children and then changed into a gymnasium. The rings on the walls represent shackles which hold her in the room which is her prison and the bars on the window also add to the feeling of this room being a prison to her. The room was used as a nursery before she had moved in. This reflects John's attitude towards her. He treats her like a child and so she must go in the room for the children. He calls her "a blessed little goose". He is patronizing her. This again shows us another example of how he treats her like a child. After this he says "He would go down the cellar, if I wished, and have it whitewashed into the bargain. When he says this he is being sarcastic. This adds to her depression. She is suffering from post natal depression. She is in a nursery for the majority of her days spent there and so this means that the majority of those hours are spent thinking about the children who were once there. She has had a baby taken away from her and having the baby with her helps women with the same illness overcome it which means because of John preventing her from seeing her baby maybe with good intentions he is really making her worse. If she is already depressed then she should be with her baby and this is adding to her depression. She feels guilty.
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What she says is always influenced by her husband. He is a doctor and because that was considered to be a respectable job back then she feels that she has to have a respectable position is society. Jenny you could say was a model of a perfect wife. She was a house wife. She feels that she is letting John down because she isn't a housewife. She wants to write stories and paint pictures. She is too creative to be a housewife and she knows this herself. She says that "I meant to be such a help to ...

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