Women In Society
...their works of literature. Much of the prose written during this period commented on social conditions. Charlotte Perkins Gilman accomplishes this task in her work, The Yellow Wallpaper. She writes how the social conditions during her time treated women. Women were imprisoned by their roles as wife and mother and were chastised if they wanted to work outside of the home. This discussion will show how social conditions were unfavorable towards women in Gilman’s time.
The prose starts out with a seemingly sane woman who has been diagnosed with a nervous disorder and has been “forbidden to ‘work’ until” (Baym et. al 508) she is well. Gilman uses this analogy as a reflection of her own mental illness she suffered from after the birth of her daughter. Mental illness was misunderstood in those days so doctors would order women to stay in bed which usually made the condition worse instead of better. Gilman herself was ordered by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, a famous neurologist of the day, to complete bed rest for her condition and she suffered immensely. She did not get well until she returned to her “life as a reluctant wife and mother and as an enthusiastic writer and frequent contributor to the Boston Woman’s Journal” (Baym et. al 506-507). This “resting cure” used in those days typically did more harm than good. When women stayed in bed and did not use their minds, they would use their creativity in other ways. As did our narrator, she imagined that there was a woman trapped in the wallpaper. This story is “an illustration of the way a mind that is already plagued with anxiety can deteriorate and begin to prey on itself when it is forced into inactivity and kept from healthy work” (“SparkNotes”). The narrator feels like a prisoner.
Not only were women’s mental illnesses understood, they too were often misunderstood. Women were treated...
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