Poetry Case

Reflecting their role in the society, women in literature are often portrayed in a position that is dominated by men. Especially in the nineteenth century, women were repressed and controlled by their husbands as well as other male influences. In "The Yellow Wall-Paper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the protagonist is oppressed and represents the effect of the oppression of women in society. The writer uses symbolism with very unique character to convey the hidden meaning of gender roles and the inferior position of women in the society. From a first point of view the woman's mind offers readers a wide glimpse of oppression on how men have put ideological prison that has subjected and silenced women. Gilman uses many symbols to bring out the idea of the mental imprisonment and the reduction of women to mere domestic entities.

The "revolting, smouldering," and "sicky sulphur" colored wallpaper that's comprises the walls of the room in which the woman dwells becomes the main focus in the story. The neutral aspect of the room, gives difficult to the woman at first, making it to weaken her physically and destroys her mentally. As the story continues the narrator discovers certain detail about the wallpaper.

After going through the wall paper it all symbolizes the common cult of domesticity ,a very popular movement in the western nations during the 18th and the 19th centuries which set women's roles in the society as child bearers and keepers of the family. According to Charlotte Gilman, women where constricted to the set parameters that men determined. They were too discouraged from getting education and even expressing their imagination, creativity, and ideas in the public. Women like the narrator became prisoners in their own homes, bound into a social depression by four walls and an overbearing male figure and his surroundings. The fact that a woman's condition surfaced a short time after experiencing childbirth also gives a clear impression at her socially expected familiar role of the cult's ideas weakening women into minority, transforming them into silent observers in the world around them.

The deteriorating condition of a woman's "temporary nervous depression" goes hand in hand to the state of the wallpaper. The woman's worsening condition symbolizes a ranging, revolutionary feminine reaction of the disease in her life, her social imprisonment. With the advancing stages of her illness, the woman's diary writing increases drastically and the tone of her words intensifies into near aggression. This gives out a clear picture of the yellow wallpaper's role in her life and the oppression it has brought to her. The disease expresses itself through the story, a symbol of individuality and creativity; when such activities are denied to the narrator, the woman decides to write in secret, reminding readers of the revolutionary movement in history in which the secret messages and communication in the private gave the mark of radical change. The woman fears the husband's reaction if he reads her diary but continues to write because of her salvation it offers for her troubled, oppressed soul.