A Feminist Critique Patriarchal ideals Essay Example

sick! " (4). The narrator is a different woman than most.

The husbands sister has the same Ideals as John. She sees herself below men and believes In gender roles. Gillian shows that It Is rare for a woman of that time to have a sense of feminist critique, more commonly accepting that she is less than a man.

The narrators husband, John, Is a doctor and a typical male of his time. The narrator explains: John laughs at me. Of course. But one expects that In marriage. John is practical in the extreme. He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of preposition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures.

John is a physician, and perhaps-?O would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this Is dead paper and a great relief to my mild)-?perhaps that Is one reason I do not get well faster. (1) He believes that he is always right in every situation over his wife, which is very ordinary of a husband during patriarchal times. When she gives her opinion about something, he laughs at her, halting that he considers It Invalid because she Is a woman and he is a man. John does not mean harm of his beliefs, but in his mind, he 1 OFF Although John is not the protagonist of the story, he is, in some sense, the central figure.

Unlike the narrator, he is given a name, and is a big time doctor, which makes him superior over his wife, portraying patriarchal ideals. Throughout the story, everything that

happens to the narrator is a result of the husband's decisions.

She is not allowed to write, is confined to a room she hates, and is forced to look at the ugly, yellow wallpaper all day because her husband has the final say in all the aspects of her life. The woman's life in this story revolves around the man's, further depicting patriarchal ideals.

When narrator and her husband arrive at the estate, she is basically imprisoned to a single room in the giant house. The room seems to be similar to a prison.

The wallpaper is ugly, the windows have bars on them, and it drives the narrator completely insane. Inside the wallpaper, she sees a woman that is trapped and she makes it her duty to free her: "As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her. I pulled and she shook, I hook and she pulled, and before morning we had peeled off yards of that paper.

A strip about as high as my head and half around the room.

And then when the sun came and that awful pattern began to laugh at me, I declared I would finish it to-day! (7) When she rips the wallpaper off of the wall, it is clear that she is not freeing a random woman, but freeing herself from the imprisonment that he husband has doomed her to. The room that she is forced to stay in represents a woman's confinement to a household, while a man is free to go where and do what he pleases, regarding

patriarchal ideals.

The message that "The Yellow Wallpaper" is sending is quite clear. Patriarchal ideals were all too common in Sailing's time, and it drove the narrator absolutely mad. Gillian portrays common patriarchal ideals in her story by showing that the narrator's opinions do not matter, revolving the story around her husband, and using the room that the narrator is confined to as an example of common women trapped in their own homes during patriarchal times.

In the author's head, she believes that men and women must be held at an equal standard in order for women to live happily.