The Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper

Prior to the twentieth century, men assigned and defined women’s roles. Although all women were effected by men determining women’s behavior, largely middle class women suffered. Men perpetrated an ideological prison that subjected and silenced women. This ideology, called the Cult of True Womanhood, legitimized the victimization of women. The Cult of Domesticity and the Cult of Purity were the central tenets of the Cult of True Womanhood. Laboring under the seeming benevolence of the Cult of Domesticity, women were imprisoned in the home or private sphere, a servant tending to the needs of the family. Furthermore, the Cult of Purity obliged women to remain virtuous and pure even in marriage, with their comportment continuing to be one of modesty. Religious piety and submission were beliefs that were more peripheral components of the ideology, yet both were borne of and a part of the ideology of True Womanhood. These were the means that men used to insure the passivity and docility of women. Religion would pacify any desires that could cause a deviation from these set standards, while submission implied a vulnerability and dependence on the patriarchal head (Welter 373-377)

Women were cast as emotional servants whose lives were dedicated to the welfare of home and family in the perservence of social stability (Papke 10). It is against the incredible pressure exerted by men to retain control that women had to agitate. Women attempted to overthrow the traditional definition of women’s roles. They subverted the ideology thrust upon them, thereby enabling a redefinition that resulted in a New Womanhood. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in the “Yellow Wallpaper,” depicted Gilman’s struggle to throw off the constraints of patriarchal society in order to be able to write.

The yellow wallpaper is symbolic of the Cult of True Womanhood, which binds women to the home and family. As in the case of Charlotte Gilman, women were constricted to the set parameters that men determined. Women are conditioned to accept these boundaries and remain in place, in the private sphere. “If anyone, male or female, dared to tamper with the complex virtues which made up True Womanhood, he was dammed immediately as the enemy of God, of civilization, and of the Republic” (Welter 372). Getting beyond the yellow wallpaper, women defied the corrupted power that men wielded over women, escaped their confinement, and created for themselves a new ideological role, one that included entry into the public sphere, or the market place.

Women such as those Charlotte Gilman portrayed in her work forged ahead and challenged