The representation of women throughout history has always gone unnoticed. It is often misunderstood or disguised as equivalent. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's, The Yellow Wallpaper and in Virginia Woolf's, A Room of Ones Own, we get a particular look into women's roles in a patriarchal society. Together Gilman and Woolf emphasize the significance of women's interior and exterior motives. Gilman points out the deprivation of a women's voice of opinion, that leads to the emphasis of their interior world. As opposed to Woolf's whose emphasis is on women's insufficiency of material space to express and create their own authenticity. Both writers genuinely express the lack of women's expression and how the circumstances they are placed in, both internally or externally, shape the individual.
In Gilman's, The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrators husband and other authority figures portray the main character as submissive and constantly belittle her opinions. Due to a presumed unstable condition, the main character is denied the ability to work or perform any strenuous physical or mental activities. Restraining the amount of activity the main character is allowed to execute creates a new fascination over the one thing she does have control of, her mind. The story focus shifts and highlights the importance of the characters thoughts. Gilman creates a window to the characters internal affairs by introducing the asylum of a journal the character secretly uses to seek refuge, "I did write for a while in spite of them; but it DOES exhaust me a good deal-having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition." (Gilman) Gilman emphasizes the difficulty this woman is placed with just to have a little form of expression. Additionally Gilman's use of first person narration facilitates the understanding of the main characters perceptions. This allows for a more intimate approach to understanding the characters helplessness and frustration of being both physically and mentally contained.