James 1 Tiffany James Dr.

Godwin Senior Portfolio 25 October 2013 Life from a Womans View According to Pat Robertson, The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family, political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians (Bentz). Robertsons statement is a classic example of how men felt about female writers and feminist writing when the female American literature movement began. Charlotte Perkins Gilman provides the reader and todays society with a glimpse of not just what it was like to be a female, but of what it was like to be a female writer during the nineteenth century. It also delves into masculinity and femininity, and traditional gender roles. Gilman provides this view into feminism through her story The Yellow Wall-Paper. According to Shawn St. Jean, Gilmans story quickly evolved from a relatively obscure and subversive magazine piece of the late nineteenth century to a formative feminist classic (St. Jean 396). Gilman starts off letting the reader know that the story takes place during the late nineteenth century when women did not have as many rights as men did. Especially, when it came to a womans health, if a physician of high standing, and ones 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 (Gilman 3). The quote shows how during this time period women were to listen to the high standing opinion of men, even if they were incorrect. A womans opinion did not matter even if she could possibly know more about a

James 2 subject. Here it is easy for the reader to see how masculinity and femininity are viewed during this time. Then the author gives the reader a glimpse of a woman struggling within herself. The narrator is trying to become that sedate, good little wife that her husband and society demand of her, but she is struggling with the idea of becoming this complacent little doll and the effort it takes to restrain herself can be seen through her nervousness and how it tires her out so much. The narrator says, I get unreasonably angry with John sometimes. Im sure I never used to be this sensitive. I think it is due to this nervous condition (Gilman 4). A wife should not become cross with her husband because it is not proper social etiquette, but John says if I feel so, I shall neglect proper self-control; so I take pains to control myself before him, at least, and that makes me very tired (Gilman 4). No one, not even a woman should have to be restrained in what he or she wants to say or do, just to make other people else feel important and good about themselves. No woman should have to lessen her value or intellect just because it scares men. A woman should not feel trapped within herself or feel that she is being smothered which is what Gilman portrays in her story when the narrator says, Im really getting quite fond of the big room, all but that horrid paper (Gilman 6). That horrid paper that the narrator speaks of is the yellow wall-paper in the room, but it is not just ugly wall-paper. It stands for the oppression that the narrator feels is being pushed upon her by her husband, by her sister-in-law and by society. She feels that she is trapped behind men and cannot seem to free herself from their tyrannical hold. However, Gilmans narrator is not the only woman trying to free herself, the wall-paper, as I said before, is torn off in spots, and it sticketh closer than a brother (Gilman 8). All of the wall-paper missing in random spots represents the imagery that Gilman uses to express how all of the women from different walks of life are trying to break free from their oppressors.

James 3 As Gilmans narrator tries to cure herself from the depression she has fallen into, John says if (she doesnt) pick up faster he shall send (her) to Weir Mitchell in the fall (Gilman 8). During this time if a man could not or did not want to deal with his wife, he could pawn her off on someone else. Men hung this power over the heads of women, daring women to act out of place. Gilman uses the woman in the wall-paper to represent all women and how, by daylight (the women are) subdued, quiet. I fancy it is the pattern that keeps (them) so still (Gilman 13). The pattern and wall-paper expresses the idea of man suppressing woman and how no matter how hard women try to escape from the cage they have been placed in, it is a hard and treacherous fight that they must win to see the light again. Just like Gilmans narrator says, there are things in that paper that nobody knows but me, or ever will (Gilman 11). In a way she is arguing for all women saying that no matter how much men try they will never understand the plight of women and why they fight so hard and wildly for their freedom. Towards the end of story, the narrator awakens to the knowledge of what is happening to women. As she becomes aware of the plight of women and her own desire to be free she notices that the front pattern does move (Gilman 15). She also feels the need to break away from the traditional gender role of a female which helps her understand why the woman behind shakes (the over pattern of wallpaper) (Gilman 15). During her time women were not allowed to do anything intellectual, so if caught writing it was a huge scandal. However, (the narrator) 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 3-4). Men hated the idea of women encroaching on their turf, and so they had to write in secret like the slaves once had to, which made it incredibly hard and tiresome for them to get any writing done.

James 4 As women suffered for their writing in secret, it brought about a movement called modernism, the use of ideas and methods which are very different from the ideas and methods used in the past. According to Dekoven, the delineation of the (anti-) tradition of female modernism is an invaluable contribution to the work of recharting the modernist territory, as is the analysis of male female conflict (the battle of the sexes) and its importance to the history of gender in modernism (Dekoven 20). The male female conflict that Dekoven speaks of has a lot to do with the fact that women were studying to break out of their boxes, causing men to get their hackles up. It makes men feel that they are losing control and so they do not approve, as when Gilman is writing and John comes home and she says, there comes John, and I must put this away, - he hates to have me write a word (Gilman 5). Since John is coming into the room the narrator feels she must hide her work which delves into the battles of the sexes idea and how women are now competing with men, which make men feel less masculine. It also does not help that women unlike men are kind of isolated when it comes to intelligent companionship that could help them on their journey. Gilmans narrator goes through the same isolation in that it is so discouraging not to have any advice and companionship about my work (Gilman 7). Women are dependent on their male benefactors to provide them with outside interaction like the main character: When I get really well, John says we can ask Cousin Henry and Julia down for a long visit; but he says he would as soon put fireworks in my pillowcase as to let me have those stimulating people about now (Gilman 7). Not allowing the narrator to have stimulating people about is another example of how men do not want women to gain ideas and thoughts that could possibly move them up in society. The author then looks at traditional gender roles again when the narrator writes about a conversation with her husband:

James 5 Better in body perhaps I began, and stopped short, for he sat up straight and looked at me with such a stern, reproachful look that I could not say another word. My darling, said he, I beg of you, for my sake and for our childs sake, as well as for your own, that you will never for one instant let that idea enter your mind! There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy (Gilman 12). The main characters husband bluntly tells her to forget any notion of being a writer, that thats not where her duties lie and that she would not be affecting just herself, but her child and husband as well. However, just like any person who is being oppressed, Johns wife eventually gets fed up and starts to envy the people who have freedom. Near the end she says, I think that woman gets out in the daytime (Gilman 15). The main character feels like women can be free when their husbands or the male in charge of them is not there to control what they do, and men are normally out and about during the day, leaving the women at home by themselves. If only men would let up on women, if only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one (Gilman 16), then they would be able to truly live. Thanks to that top pattern, men, oppressing and squeezing the life out of the under pattern, women, some of the women who were trapped and finally broke free became something that no one wishes on their worst enemy: animalistic. Catherine J. Golden says, in the 1980s, critics aligned Charlotte Perkins Gilmans heroine of The Yellow Wall-Paper with Charlotte Brontes wild haired, brutish Bertha Mason, crawling on all fours in the locked attic of Thornfield Hall (Golden 17). Men would shut women up and stifle their creativity, and make them become animalistic in nature from being shut off from intellectual contact. Like the

James 6 narrator had been deprived of intellectual conversation which caused her to go mad in a sense, so by the time she was finally free, (she wondered) if they all came out of that wall-paper as (she) did (Gilman 18), and she did not know what to do with herself. Just like Manson, by the end she is all body, an incarnation not only of hysteria but of male fears about women (Golden 16). Gilman had become her husbands worst nightmare because she finally found her freedom: Ive got out at last, said I, in spite of you and Jane? And Ive pulled off most of the paper, so you cant put me back (Gilman 19). She had finally achieved the goal most women aspired to: she had gained her independence and freedom in writing and becoming her own person, but in the process of striving for that freedom, she lost something more important: her mind. However, this is not the case with all women who finally gain their freedom; a majority of the women who gain their independence go on to become successful, well respected women. Throughout Gilmans story The Yellow Wall-Paper, the reader can see how traditional gender roles and the idea of masculinity and femininity played a part in female works during the nineteenth century. From how men treated women as objects that needed to be kept up on a shelf and only taken down when men felt the need to be entertained. They felt that women should have no identity of their own and therefore should not write or do anything that required intellect. According to Aristotle, the male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules and the other is ruled. Woman is matter, waiting to be formed by the active male principle (Bressler 145). But here we have women like Gilman who show the reader that mens idea of women needs rethinking.

James 7 Works Cited Bentz, Leslie. "The Top 10: Facebook 'vomit' button for gays and other Pat Robertson quotes." CNN. 09 07 2013: n. page. Web. 30 Oct. 2013. Bressler, Charles. Feminism. Literary Criticism. 5th ed. United States: Pearson Eucation, Inc., 2011. 145. Print. Dekoven, Marianne. "Gendered Doubleness and the "Origins" of Moderist Form." Tulsa Studies in Womens Literature. 8.1 (1989): 19-42. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wall-Paper and Other Stories. 1st. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. 3-19. Print. Golden, Catherine J. "Marking Her Territory: Feline Behavior in "The Yellow WallPaper"." American Literary Realism. 40.1 (2007): 16-31. Web. 5 Nov. 2013. St. Jean, Shawn "Hanging "The Yellow Wall-Paper": Feminism and Textual Studies." Feminist Studies. 28.2 (2002): 396-415. Web. 5 Nov. 2013.