Analysis of Feminist Quotes from "The Yellow Wallpaper"

Alice Walker once said, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.” Power can take place multiple ways such as protesting, writing and exercising the First Amendment. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, which takes place in the 1890s, the narrator who is identified as John's wife, is diagnosed with depression. Her husband was a well-known doctor who had diagnosed his wife after having given birth. John is described as controlling while John's wife is told she must stay in one room and only sleep and eat. The narrator wanted to write she thought it helped her recover while John thought differently and forbids her of writing. Some quotes from 'The Yellow Wallpaper' story shows her emotions and encapsulate the feminist themes.

Feminism Through the Alice Walker's Short Story

The “Yellow Wallpaper” is one of the best known short stories in literature since the late 1800s. The author of the “Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman was inspired by her mental health issues to write The Yellow Wallpaper to influence the medical positions to look more in depth into only rest therapy. The narrator of the story is a woman who just had a child and her husband, John, is her physician. The narrator explains how she feels, what we would call today postpartum depression; however, her husband, John, does not see the same symptoms. John explains she is suffering from nervous depression. After John diagnoses her with “nervous depression”, he tells her she must be on rest therapy. They move on the grounds of a country mansion where she is not allowed to have communication with the outside world and can only take medicine and sit in a room. The narrator explains how she is not even allowed to write in her journal she must do it in secret. The narrator states, “If a physician of high standing, and one's own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency - what is one to do? My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and he says the same thing”. Even though the narrator feels better after writing, she could not explain to her husband why his therapy is not working for her. The author uses the room to express how the narrator truly feels being trapped in the room. The narrator describes the events thus:

Through watching so much at night. When it changes so, I have finally found an out.

The front pattern does move - and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I

think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls

around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over.

The women whom she saw in living in the wallpaper is a figment of the narrator's imagination. She sees the women mimicking the movements she has done every day in the mansion. The narrator starts to rip off the wallpaper and states, “I pulled, and she shook, I shook, and she pulled, and before morning we had. Peeled off yards of that paper'. The narrator gleams in happiness, saying “I've got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane? And I've pulled off most of the paper, so, you can't put me back!” The narrator tries to explain to her husband how she has released the women in the wallpaper, named Jane, and now they were both free. Then the narrator’s husband comes in the mist of her nervous breakdown. Her husband, John, “fainted”. The narrator shows John stating how he, being her physician and her husband, was not a good choice during this time. The narrator is having a nervous breakdown and all her husband could do was faint. Physicians did not know a large amount about mental illness. The narrator sees her husband as if he was the antagonist; however, looking at it from a modern day point of view, John was only following ways' society looked at mental issues. The narrator could not perceive how society would make her and their new family look. John did not want her to socialize due to how people might believe she was crazy.

The below quotes from 'The Yellow Wallpaper' encapsulate the feminist themes of challenging patriarchal expectations, the struggle for self-expression and autonomy, and the recognition of women's unique experiences and perspectives.

1. 'I've got out at last...in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!' - This quote demonstrates the protagonist's rebellion against the oppressive expectations imposed upon women in society.

2. 'I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.' - This quote reflects the protagonist's criticism of the traditional expectations of femininity and the restrictive roles assigned to women.

3. 'There are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will.' - This quote highlights the narrator's realization that she possesses a unique perspective and insight into the struggles of women, which remains unacknowledged and unheard in society.

4. 'I'm sure I never used to be so sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition.' - This quote reflects the societal gaslighting and dismissal of women's experiences, attributing their emotions and struggles solely to a supposed 'nervous condition.'

In the short story characters are caught in marriages since society requested it of them. The storyteller in 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is naturally introduced to the 1890s, when a lady's solitary worth in the public eye was increased through marriage to a spouse. Notwithstanding, her essential experiences come from her better half's refusal to give her a chance to do anything, as he trusts that she is too sick to even think about knowing what is best for her. Mrs. Hayashi was likewise constrained into marriage by society, and gambling with family traditions. Be that as it may, Mr. Hayashi is more savagely oppressive than “The Yellow Wallpaper' spouse is. Threw out this paper I have given proof in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” that mental issues were not clearly not given the proper research in the 1800s as well as the patients in this time period were not given the correct treatment. The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story provides a huge panorama of the 19th century society with its faults and merits about mental issues. It shows the true scenarios of women, their oppression, subordination to men and greater importantly the side effects of all the ones factors. The narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is one of those women who dealt with the pain and sorrow of the 19th century. She is submissive to her husband, continuously feels the triumphing all round social thoughts by not permitting her to be around people. She is trapped inside the world which does no longer allow her to live existence to the entire. No person takes her comments serious, so she regularly turns into solitary, which led her to the paranoia and intellectual instability. The man domination, social constraints further to develop the clinical technological expertise in the nineteenth century surely make a contribution to the oppression of female and her intellectual problems. Complete domination and control leaves no risk for purchasing the narrator’s emotions off her chest. In the final scenes you can see that the narrator’s breakdown to her felt more like a break through with her emotions.

Works Cited

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• Lombardi, Esther. “Quotes Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper'.” ThoughtCo, ThoughtCo, 15 Feb. 2019, www.thoughtco.com/the-yellow-wallpaper-quotes-742033.
• Murillo, Cynthia. “The Spirit of Rebellion: The Transformative Power of the Ghostly Double in Gilman, Spofford, and Wharton.” Women’s Studies, vol. 42, no. 7, Oct. 2013, pp. 755–781. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1080/00497878.2013.820612. Apr. 2019
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• Charlotte Perkins Gilman. “The Yellow Wallpaper”. “Literature and the Writing Process.” Literature and the Writing Process, by Elizabeth McMahan et al., Pearson, 2017.