Traditional Gender Roles

Traditional Gender Role

The highly critically acclaimed story, "The Yellow Wallpaper" was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Gilman is mainly famous for her most critical female narrator character who gains most of the attention, but what is one to think of her female character's husband, John? He is an extremely practical physician who recognizes his wife's fragile state, but fails to realize just how severe her condition is. Neither does he have a sufficient way of treating the woman he loves; instead taking her to the country for fresh air claiming the isolation will help her to breathe and think. John is always shown as a caring husband and does have positive intentions for his wife; however because of his practical, patronizing, and dominating traits, all prove to become very dangerous in his wife's treatment.

In the beginning of the "The Yellow Wallpaper," John is being described by his wife. She first points out one of John's first characteristic traits stating that "John is practical in the extreme" (170). Because John is a respected physician, his assumption of his superior wisdom and maturity leads him to misjudge his own wife's treatment. He is so certain that he knows what's best for his wife that he begins to disregards her feelings and opinions of the matter, forcing his wife to hide her true feelings of what she needs for herself.

As the story continues John begins to patronize his wife calling her "a blessed little goose" and rejects her smallest wishes, such as the time when she suggests a switch of bedrooms, he refuses so as not to overindulge her "fancies." John's constant patronizing of his wife, he continues by saying "Bless her little heart!" said he with a big hug. "She shall be as sick as she pleases!" (178). John belittles his wife as if she were a child and was making her sickness all up, although he does not intend to harm his wife, he fails to understand his wife's predicament and his ignorance about what she really needs ultimately proves dangerous.

John's strong influence of dominance starts to take its toll on his wife. In a conversation