Avagyan 1

Mel Avagyan
Dr. Alison Jeffries
STACC English 100
12 November 2014
Conflict in The Yellow Wallpaper
In todays day in age, we have a family with parents that both work full time,
cook, clean, and care for their child or children. Men and women are in the same job
fields for the most part; they study the same material and live the same lives leading to
their desired adulthood. One hundred fifty years ago, it was almost the opposite. While
the men were at work, the women had the domestic role with expectations to keep the
house clean and presentable, while cooking food, and caring for their children. Women
who tried to take a different route towards gender equality were considered low in class,
and were compared to prostitutes by the men. Men were also much more
knowledgeable than women, according to society in the day. Women had little to no
opinions or anything worthy of speaking about. Before gender equality, men controlled
women essentially leading them into a rebellious state, depression or insanity.
The men in America during the 1900s knew everything and anything, and
whatever they said, went. They had knowledge and great experiences. They were
intellectuals who had the right to speak and be heard. In Gilmans short story, John, the
physician husband of the narrator, diagnoses his wife with temporary nervous
depression- a slight hysterical tendency(Gilman 85). He then declares that the only way
she will get better is if she is treated with the rest cure, a treatment created by S. Weir

Avagyan 2
Mitchell, a widely known physician. The rest cure was a period of time where the
patient rested for three months while all her needs were taken care of. This includes being
fed, changed, taken to the restroom, given water and so on. The patient did nothing for
herself until the resting period was over. During this time, the patient was to stay put in
one bedroom, away from society and away from contact with anyone, including child and
family members. John also think it is hurtful for the narrator to think about the illness she
is consumed with, simply because it depresses her even more. Not only does John want
the narrator not to think, but he is also not pleased by the idea of her writing in a journal,
because he thinks it decreases her energy level. The narrator claims, I did write for a
while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal-having to be so sly about it, or
else meet with heavy opposition(Gilman 86). Writing, for the narrator, is a way of
getting her thoughts out somewhere where she feels she is being heard, as if a free
woman.
The narrator uses the terms in spite of them, to show how strongly her husband
and keepers are keeping her from being free. She also claims that she had to be so sly
about it, demonstrating her absolute need for freedom and hiding any signs of her being
free from anyone else. John clearly does not understand his own diagnosis, and he refuses
to listen to his patient and wifes outlook on her own illness. There is a conflict when a
man and woman cannot communicate to understand each other in order to help with the
illness. At the time, it was absurd for a woman to state her own opinion, therefore, what
the man said was right because there were no other opinions to be heard.

Avagyan 3
Most women at the time were afraid to speak out because they were aware of the
consequences ahead of them if they were to do so. In the article A Brief History of
Womens Rights Movements, it states, Militant political action among women began in
Britain in 1903 with the formation of the Women's Social and Political
Union (WSPU) for the right to vote. The organization was led by Emmeline Pankhurst.
Women of all ages and classes demonstrated on a massive scale; the demonstrators were
jailed, locked out of their meeting places, and thrown down the steps of Parliament.
When women tried to speak out, they were immediately shut down and punished for it.
Of course that had to scare the women into behaving themselves. Instead, this cruel
treatment made women even more angry and insane. John controls the narrator in The
Yellow Wallpaper, fundamentally taking her ability to speak for herself. In result, the
narrator is stuck in an unpleasant room for a long period of time, causing her to go
perfectly mentally unstable.
In Feminism in the 19th Century: Womens Rights, Roles and Limits,
Christopher Sailus teaches,
Largely due to these traditional expectations for women prior to the 19th
century, very few women had the same opportunities for education as
men. Indeed, educating women was often seen as subversive, a possible
perversion of the correct social order women were so bound to their
husbands that under 19th-century British common law, they were barely
considered people at all.

Avagyan 4
At the time, men did not see women as actual people with potential bright futures.
Without an education, women had little to say, and that is the way society was expected
to be. In The Yellow Wallpaper, John does not want his wife to think or write, because
thinking leads to some form of educational development, which was not longed for.
Because of this inability to speak out, the narrator has to suffer through the rest cure
and only becomes more insane because her husband, the man with knowledge, tells her it
is the right thing to do. Much to his surprise, his wife continually worsens as the weeks
go by. There is a problem when a man cannot admit that he is wrong, even as he destroys
his wifes life.
Claire Jones, in her article Women and Madness, explains the root of why
women were considered to be naturally passive, dependent, sexually disinterested and
born to be mothers and helpmeets to men(1 Jones). According to Jones, prior to the
late eighteenth century, madness was commonly considered masculine. The images of
Ophelia struck people as sexual, childlike and golden, and soon became a specific type
of madness for the psychiatrists of the time. Jones mentions The Yellow Wallpaper as a
story that examines a patients female madness as its theme. She claims The Yellow
Wallpaper offers a description of womens insanity and blames it on the confined
intellectual and social lives that middle-class women were forced to lead(1). Restricted
from freedom, education and rights, women were seen as objects, which led to anger and
rebellion. But at the time, society saw anger as a form of madness. We now, in our
modern day, understand that anyone who is restricted from freedom is bound to be angry
about it and appear mad.

Avagyan 5
To finish, conflict is being portrayed through the treatment of women in the
nineteenth century. The Yellow Wallpaper is a story examining this treatment with
John falsely diagnosing his wife, confining her in an unpleasant room for a period of time
spent in rest cure and essentially causing her to go entirely insane. In the nineteenth
century, it was common to treat women unfairly. Today, gender equality has a great role
in society.

Avagyan 1
Mel Avagyan
Dr. A. Jeffries
STACC English 100
12 November 2014
Works Cited

"Women's Rights Movements." Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. Grolier Online, 2014.

Web. 1 July 2014. (12 November 2014)

Sailus, Christopher. "Feminism in the 19th Century: Women's Rights, Roles, and Limits."
Education Portal. Education Portal, 1999. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.

"Women and Madness." HerStoria Women and Madness Comments. Claire Jones, 7 June
2012. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.

http://www.bucks.edu/media/bcccmedialibrary/pdf/HOWTOWRITEALITERARYAN
YSISESSAY_10.15.07_001.pdf

Avagyan 1
Mel Avagyan
Dr. A. Jeffries
STACC English 100
12 November 2014
Annotated Bibliography

"Women's Rights Movements." Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia. Grolier Online, 2014

Web. 1 July 2014. (12 November 2014)

Womens rights are focused mainly on the equality of gender in all aspects
including political, social, economic status and a legislative safeguard against
discrimination of gender. For over two centuries, women have been reaching these goals
of equality slowly but surely. Women were treated equal to slaves with no rights,
opinions, or voice. Thankfully, over time this changed starting with womens suffrage in
1890, Wyoming. With no rights, opinions or voice, women were known to have no
knowledge, therefore, being overruled by the men. This is why most women expressed
their freedom by writing, imagining and thinking in secret from the men, as told in The
Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Gilman.

Sailus, Christopher. "Feminism in the 19th Century: Women's Rights, Roles, and Limits."
Education Portal. Education Portal, 1999. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.

Avagyan 2
In the 19th century, men were expected to live a public and social life whereas
women were expected to take on a domestic role of cooking, cleaning and child rearing.
An educated woman was considered to be a possible perversion of the correct social
order and they were entirely shut out of the public sphere of society unless accompanied
by their husband or father. Women were essentially treated as slaves. Similar to The
Yellow Wallpaper, John is out in public all day, whether it is work or social gatherings,
and his wife, the narrator, is locked in a room she absolutely despises. Even without the
rest cure period, she would still be expected to stay at home and take care of the house.

"Women and Madness." HerStoria Women and Madness Comments. Claire Jones, 7 June
2012. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.

Womens attitudes were reinforced by Victorian medical science, which

increasingly came to define women in biological terms as naturally passive, dependant,
sexually disinterested and born to be mothers and helpmeets to men. These beliefs
decreased females freedom of expression, limiting their access to education,
employment and ownership of property. Women who tried to rebel against this
conformity were diagnosed as mad for exhibiting unnatural and unwomanly behaviors.
The Yellow Wallpaper offers a keen description of womens insanity and blame it on
the confined intellectual and social lives that women were forced to live.

Avagyan 1
Mel Avagyan
Dr. A. Jeffries
STACC English 100
7 December 2014
Revision Plan
Paragraph 1: Comma placements need to be replaces. Parallelism needs to be
fixed. Questions needs to be answered about a statement made about men. Some word
changes could be placed. Minor grammar issues need to be fixed. A thesis needs to be in
order, answering the conflict in the story.
Paragraph 2: Exact setting of the topic needs to be presented. A correct quote
citation for a short story needs to be fixed. Several minor words need to be taken out or
replaced. Verb tenses need to be corrected. The paragraph should be divided in two parts,
due to its lengthiness.
Paragraph 3: Fix minor grammar mistakes and apply contextual info used to the
story.
Paragraph 4: Change the long quote I used to a block quote format. Fix and clarify
a couple awkward sentences. Revise a few minor grammar mistakes.
Paragraph 5: Fix minor grammar mistakes and citation errors.
Paragraph 6: Rewrite conclusion to clarify the main idea of my entire essay in a
more formal manner.