"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a
narrative of a woman's descent into mental illness because of depression and the
disturbing oppression that she experiences in the patriarchal society of the Victorian
Age. For the topic that deals with how individuals respond to the constraints
of their society, you may wish to examine the narrator's social dependence
upon her husband, her depression about this dependence and the terrible repression of
her artistic individuality, and, finally her attempt at self-assertion. With these
three subtopics, you can come up with a thesis, or general statement about the
narrator's oppressive situation, then discuss the three relationships by enumerating
three opinions based upon the three conditions/relationships that she experiences. For
instance, you could state that Gilman's narrator exposes the repressive conditions of
the Victorian woman by the patriarchal societal demands that the woman be submissive.
These demands cause the mental illness of the narrator, who tries to assert her
individuality by fighting back in the manner of freeing the woman behind the
wallpaper.
See the links below to help you generate some
ideas. For example, a perspective of one of the essays is that the woman is forced to
act as the nineteenth-century idea, and the wallpaper incident is a desperate attempt
at individuality and self-assertion.
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