In The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the most prominent symbols and the most important ones are, the dominant male, the journal, and the yellow wallpaper who help characterize the protagonists as an oppressed individual that has been pushed from depression into madness. Gilman evidently suggests that the narrator's solitary confinement and exclusion from the public results in her own path to insanity. The protagonist's tone throughout the story changes from nave and depressed to paranoid and excited, and as she grows crazy, her sentences reflect the state of her mind. Therefore, the main character's struggle for happiness and zest for a life far.
more exciting than the present; is what give the narrator an awakening, which.
she must react to. .
The women's role in society has often been portrayed in a position that is dominated by men; especially in the nineteenth century, women were introverted and controlled by their husbands as well as other male influences. The narrator in this case is oppressed and represents the effect of the oppression of women in society: the dominant submissive relationship between an oppressive husband and his submissive wife pushes her from depression into insanity. The main character is continually submissive, bowing to her husband's wishes, even though she is unhappy and depressed. She is virtually imprisoned in her bedroom and not allowed to do anything, supposedly to rest and recover. When the narrator says, "So I take phosphates or phosphites "whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to "work- until I am well again- (631). Being imprisoned is immensely depressive, perchance if she had been allowed to come and go and do as she pleased, her depression might have improved. The narrator's husband has adopted the idea that she must have complete rest if she is to recover; he just imposed his ways on her and expected her to abide them.
