Gendered World

Gendered World

Introduction

“I tried to have a real earnest reasonable talk with him the other day, and tell him how I wish he would let me go and make a visit to Cousin Henry and Julia. But he said I wasn't able to go, nor able to stand it after I got there.” This is an excerpt from “The yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins in 1892. The power and control of men over women in the story is echoed in the differences and quarrel she faced. Charlotte Perkins Gilman portrayed women with passive outlook through madness of a woman put away in her own room (Renner 1995, pp. 29). In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the women, Jane, did efforts with the diagnoses her husband made for her as a patient of temporary nervous depression. The author used the characters to present the effects of male dominance on females. In the story the women struggled with the control and power of males as decision makers of their lives.

Discussion Women during the era of modernization faced great dominance from their male partners. The literature of that time also portrays the indifference and authority of men, the women came across at that time.” Women, written in literature of nineteenth century, were repeatedly portrayed as an obedient to men. Writings of that era often describe women as subjugated by the society as well as influenced by male throughout their lives.

The story was written during the turn in of nineteenth century when it was habitual to treat women as little children or as those who did not possess any will of their own. With the images of menacing bedstead, barred windows, creeping women and a dominant man, the issues of gender roles arises in the story, “The Yellow Pages”, very effectively (Auerbach, 1987). The story is written in a way that the suffering woman was herself the narrator who was diagnosed by a temporary nervous depression by her husband. In order to keep her nerves calm, her husband brought her to some distant town where the house seemed strange to the women (Thrailkill 2002, pp. 527).

Throughout life, a woman obeyed first her father and then her husband, brother or son. While civilizations existed in history that gave the woman a privileged role (or Byzantine Egyptian queens for example), in most Western societies tasks assigned to women were limited to home care and family. In ...