In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the dominant/submissive relationship between an oppressive husband and his submissive wife pushes her from depression into insanity. This dominant relationship was brought on by the roles men and women were to play.

Prior to the twentieth century, men assigned and defined women’s roles. Although all women were affected by men determining women’s behavior, largely middle class women suffered. Men perpetrated an ideological prison that subjected and silenced women. Women were not looked upon as the 2nd piece of the relationship. They were looked at as a decorative piece that is to serve the husband as he sees fit. She believes that the mansion incorporates external instruments of restraint suggestive of a prison or mental ward. John, her husband, laughs at her opinions regarding the house and her feelings toward the area. Her comment, "but one expects that," implying within a marriage, conveys the narrator's

helplessness and perceived inability to change her uncomfortable situation. In the 19th Century, middle-class women expected to be looked down upon

and in turn accepted this role that they were to play. M

streak the narrator is referring to is the effect of her crawling around against the wall, deteriorating the wallpaper. She now not only still does not realize what this room is for; to imprison her, she has turned into the woman that was imprisoned here before her. She is no longer Jane, she is also the woman that is escaping from behind the wallpaper, which is a symbol of her psychotic mind trying to escape her sane one.

wall-paper to their destinations. Her first generalization of this ugly wall-paper is only a glimpse of what is to come. As the narrator's mind continues to wander uncontrollably, she leads us to this next quote, which moves us further into her disturbed mind. "He says no one but myself can help me out of it, that I must use my will and self-control and not let any silly fancies run away with me." The narrator feels that John is manipulating her again. She feels this because in the second passage, she had become comfortable with the room and wanted to open up to her husband and tell him what she thought she had been seeing. However, John was terrified of the ideas she had in her head and of what she might believe to be reality. He tried to convince her to control all of her inhibitions and act sanely. This led him to manipulate her through guilt by implying that she must think of herself as getting better in her mind and body, for the sake of other people, rather than hersel

Some topics in this essay:
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