In the 19th century the roles of women were very different than they are today. Women had few rights and their only purpose was to maintain the household while men worked all day. Men of this generation made family decisions and their wife’s own personal decisions. We have seen textual evidence of the life of women in the nineteenth century, thanks to Charlotte Gilman and Susan Glaspell. Only a century later have women received more equality and less responsibility. After “The Yellow wallpaper” and “Trifles” was written, the dominant roles of the husband and wife had decreased to a minimum. The three women from the short stories “Trifles”, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, and “A Sorrowful Woman” all have some sort of mental illness. Their illness has taken control of their decision making. This is shown when Mrs. Hale kills her husband, John’s wife rips off the wallpaper from her bedroom, and the sorrowful woman disconnects herself from her family and responsibilities. …show more content…
Whether it was too much dominance like in “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Trifles” or not enough, like in “A Sorrowful Woman”. It was too hard on the women which caused them to react harshly. The husband 's method of overly controlling their sick wives doesn’t work because treating women like property doesn’t make them feel good. As well as the method of letting the sick woman treat her own sickness based her feelings, because she will feel like she has too much responsibility, and this stress would eventually overcome her. All of these problems could have been avoided if the relationship supremacy was equal. This way the couples would at least be in control themselves, but when needed their spouse could step in and act as a referee in a crisis situation. If there is a middle ground for the amount of dominance each spouse should have, then things might have not ended so fatally in these three
Chapter 16 of Exploring American Histories shows us the diversity among women’s roles. For example, women in a household were expected to cook meals, can fruits and vegetables, as well as wash and iron clothes. In relation to Exploring American Histories, we are taught in Zipf’s book that the institution of Samarcand Manor also helped women incorporate the duties they were expected to do in their households. Women who obeyed were simply treated better than those who did not. Women who showed outstanding abilities in their field were given the right to participate in leisure activities.
“Her domain was the household, the garden, and the henhouse, and her days were spent processing the raw materials her husband produced into usable items such as food, clothing, candles, and soap (page6).” As known by many, women during the 17th century were to maintain their households for their husbands. By the 18th century they were expected to not only maintain a household, but to take care of their families and be proper women. Then by the late 18th century women's roles changed completely to having to be a surrogate father, and main provider. The roles of women during this time period changed drastically in such short periods of times.
The next chapter highlights the gendered division of labor and the difficulty to keep a family as a slave. Chapter six and seven moves on to the eighteenth century and shows how women have improved in areas such as more political participation and increasing social class of
A Husband’s Control: Women Must Defer to Her Husband in All Matters of Marriage and Obedience As the narrator introduces her story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the reader goes back in where a women is considered fragile in her mind and naïve to the world around them. The narrative depicts a woman’s strife while personally suffering “nervous depression” (376) and how such a malady happened to be treated by her attending physician, whom is also her husband by the name of John. In 1899, polite society dictated and observed propriety at all times therefore, wives and unmarried ladies were expected to defer to their husband or the oldest living male family member within the residence.
Women in the 1600s to the 1800s were very harshly treated. They were seen as objects rather than people. They were stay-at-home women because people didn’t trust them to hold jobs. They were seen as little or weak. Women living in this time period had to have their fathers choose their husbands.
The Unnamed Woman Up until the 1900’s woman had few rights, thus they relied heavily on men. Women could not vote, they could not own their own property, and very few worked. Women’s jobs were solely to care for children and take care of the home. Women during this time, typically accepted their roles in society and the economy ( “Progressive Era to New Era, 1900-1909”).
In the nineteenth century, woman had no power over men in society. They were limited in their freedom, as their lives were controlled by their husbands. Some women did not mind this lifestyle, and remained obedient, while some rebelled and demanded their rights. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and “The Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, are short stories that exposes the lifestyle women lived in the nineteenth century. The protagonists from both stories, Jane and Georgiana, similarly lived a male dominated lifestyle.
The woman was going crazy in her own world as she saw something coming out the yellow wall. The wallpaper had a bright yellow color that drove the narrator crazy and tried to peel it down. The woman was fighting with her mental illness as she explains her influence of her personal life, a woman’s right, and her mental illness. A woman in the early 20th century wrote a story, her story was heard about her mental illness and she had no type of support. The narrator of the story “Why I Wrote the Yellow Wallpaper” says, “It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked” (Gilman
Women in England during the 1800s faced restrictions to participate in movements and were limited in their political speaking and voting capabilities. Although many women accepted their fate, some fought for a different social role. (“The Women 's Rights Movement”) Women such Mary Wollstonecraft, Jane Austen, and Mary Shelley inspired a new way of radical thinking towards human rights, specifically the rights of women (Surgis). Thanks to these inspiring individuals, there was a change in women’s attitude regarding their options to become part of the work force, gain an education, and have equal rights in marriage (Surgis).
The women were expected to create a happy home, guard the religion, and the morality of her family. The unmarried and married women who tried to seek work outside the home faced limited employment opportunities because of their gender. Women were expected to only focus on domestic duties and her role were limited to continue living in the man’s world. Women roles were expected to be in line with the culture and norms set by the society. The American culture perceived that women were not intellectually and emotionally stable to be involved in the complex world of work and, therefore, women did not take up leadership and political roles.
The nineteenth century was a critical point in time for women, in regards to their roles in society (“The Role
Charlotte Gilman’s short story, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, (1899) is a text that describes how suppression of women and their confinement in domestic sphere leads to descend into insanity for escape. The story is written as diary entries of the protagonist, who is living with her husband in an old mansion for the summer. The protagonist, who remains unnamed, is suffering from post-partum depression after the birth of her child and is on ‘rest’ cure by her physician husband. In this paper, I will try to prove that ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ acts as a subversive text by portraying the protagonist’s “descent into madness” as a result of the suppression that women faced in Victorian period.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” critiques Victorian womanhood in several ways throughout the text. Victorian women were expected to be pure, dainty, and perfectly angelic. They were also expected to be perfect mothers, wives, and hostesses at all times. If a woman were to express too much emotion, she would be called hysterical. Hysteria was considered a medical condition which rendered a woman incapable of reason or generally thinking like an adult.
During the 1890’s until today, the roles of women and their rights have severely changed. They have been inferior, submissive, and trapped by their marriage. Women have slowly evolved into individuals that have rights and can represent “feminine individuality”. The fact that they be intended to be house-caring women has changed.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a first-person written feminist short story that critiques and condemns the nineteenth-century American male attitude towards women and their physical as well as mental health issues. In the short story, Perkins Gilman juxtaposes universal gender perspectives of women with hysterical tendencies using the effects of gradually accumulating levels of solitary confinement; a haunted house, nursery, and the yellow wallpaper to highlight the American culture of inherited oblivious misogyny and promote the equality of sexes. The narrator and her husband, John, embody the general man and woman of the nineteenth century. John, like the narrator’s brother and most men, is “a physician of high