
The first wave of feminism was one that many people, especially men, believed would never happen, but they were wrong. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman puts the issue of women’s oppression in the 19th century into perspective. The narrator of this story is oppressed by her husband, but does not realize it until the end. She begins to understand that her husband is not doing everything out of love, but instead doing it for his own benefit. If we look closely at the way the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is treated by her husband, John, and the way the narrator deals with the wallpaper, we can conclude that John embodies 19th century patriarchal superiority and is preventing the narrator from expressing herself. This is important because men believed at this time they were the ones to call the shots, and Gilman wrote this short story to call out these issues of women’s oppression.

John prevents the narrator from writing, assuming it will help her to heal, but it is preventing her from having an outlet where she can express herself. The narrator is held up in a small and drafty room meant to be a nursery, and the only way she can relieve herself of the loneliness and anxiety she feels is by getting all her thoughts down on paper. Although she believes at the beginning of the story that he is doing everything out of love, she becomes skeptical of him and even realizes that his intentions are not good. He is not prescribing these “cures” to help her, he is doing it because he believes he knows all and believes the narrator to be over exaggerating. He does it for his ego, too, and to make himself look professional and intelligent in front of his colleagues. He does not even believe she is truly sick, and his cures make her even worse than before. Janice Haney-Peritz talks about how John tells his wife that there “is really nothing the matter with her”; therefore, he “prescribes a regimen” that he believes will improve her condition; he tells her not to think about “her condition” and because of her “habit of fanciful story-making,” she is to avoid writing too (115). This brings up the issue of how John believes himself to be in a higher position than the narrator, partly because he is a man and men were believed to be extremely intelligent, while women were lower on the scale and simple-minded. Since he was a doctor, he could prescribe his wife anything and she would be cured instantly. Therefore, he told her that the main cause of her problems was her excessive writing, and the only thing she could do was follow his orders, or she would hear unnecessary amounts of scolding from him. The writer of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, also suffered from the same illness and was treated by a man who believed himself to be all-knowing, and told Gilman to get as much rest as possible. Hume expands on this, saying:

Both Gilman and her narrator attempt to create an elaborate and deceptive narrative, one appearing as twelve journal entries written over several months. Although many critics argue that these entries do recount the narrator's descent into madness, I think they are better understood as part of both Gilman and her narrator's attempt to sabotage and triumph over the certainty and authority of John who, like Gilman's nemesis, S. Weir Mitchell, is an allegedly wise man of medicine (4). 

Gilman and the narrator both wrote to relieve themselves of their troubles, which included the men in their lives who attempted to fix them in such a way that slowed down their recovery greatly.

John’s need to prevent the narrator from writing only made things worse as she continues to write while being stuck in a room she does not like. John locks the narrator in this small, upstairs bedroom, which prevents her from communicating with the outside world. She spends all of her time in the same place and does not get to experience anything other than that; therefore, she drives herself insane. The narrator is hardly even allowed downstairs, where there are other people to interact with and even her own child. John says that being around people will negatively stimulate her issues when it would really help her to improve. John possibly assumes that she might hurt someone or say things that could be held against him. His reputation means so much to him that he is willing to keep his wife in captivity to prevent word from being spread around that he could be an insufficient physician. “Gilman’s nervous narrator has, as her narrative reveals, already been locked up and, therefore, cannot harm anyone…” (Hume 5). The narrator is pushed into a room that she cannot escape, and cannot interact with anyone because of it. John thinks she possibly could hurt someone or say unexpected things, but if she had been exposed to people and their conversations, she could focus on that instead of the yellow wallpaper. Being around people would help her to feel comforted and cared about, where being locked in a room would make her feel the opposite.

While John keeps the narrator locked up, he also simultaneously refers to her in degrading terms, making her seem more like a child or a caged animal than a woman. If we look at the way that John speaks to the narrator, we notice that he calls her things like “little girl” to insinuate that she is lower than him and she knows nothing. Children are sometimes held back from doing things because of their lack of life experience, so, “if we take this narrator at her word, "children" not only need to be kept behind bars to be controlled, but are capable of "ravaging" wallpaper with the same kind of "perseverance as well as hatred" which she eventually displays toward it” (Hume 5). The narrator begins to act like a child partly because John is speaking to her and treating her like a child. John speaks to the narrator in a way that makes her seem insignificant, like when he calls her “little girl”. He wants her to be submissive and dependent so he can manipulate her to his advantage. “John's much-discussed patronizing language toward her as a "little" woman” (Hume 6) shows that he considers her to be his child like she is dependent on him and would not be capable of doing anything if he were not around. That is why John prescribes the narrator these cures; he truly thinks that he is all-knowing and can cure a woman’s silly problem. Speaking to the narrator in this way leads us to a feeling of untrustworthiness towards John.

The yellow wallpaper that the narrator stares at every day represents the oppression that the narrator is facing, and when she begins to be extremely bothered by it to the point of tearing it down, it tells us that she has begun to give up and accept her fate. At the beginning of the story, the narrator sees John’s actions as loving, but over time she starts to realize he is doing all of it for his own benefit. When the narrator tears down the wallpaper, she does it in a way that makes her seem like a child, which is what John has wanted the whole time. He has wanted her to be submissive and to follow his word. The narrator also identifies with the shadow-woman in the wallpaper, as Haney-Peritz points out: “On the other hand, however, the narrator’s identification with the wallpaper’s shadow-woman seems to have turned her into the woman of John’s dreams, for not only did the shadow woman first appear while John was sleeping, but the narrator also suspects that when all is said and done, she is what John really desires…” (120). This quote proves that the narrator has accepted defeat and she begins to show compliant qualities, which is what John has always wanted. She even gives in to this shadow-woman who could be the woman who John prefers, and she attempts to be like this woman. The narrator is no longer the woman she was meant to be, but instead the woman who John wants, as Hume points out: “That is, it is not "Jane" but only what is left of "Jane" (whom many Gilman critics now regard as the narrator) who chronicles these events. The narrator is the "woman in the wall-paper," one who is both in and out of her mind—and, at some level, she knows it even as she begins to write” (11). Jane is not the full version of herself, especially towards the end of the story. She has been torn down by her husband’s methods of medicine and is left as only a child-like version of herself. Because of this, she overreacts with the wallpaper and rips off as much of it as she can.

If we look at how the narrator acts around John and even the yellow wallpaper at the beginning, as compared to her actions towards the end of the story, we can conclude that she has realized that she has been intensely oppressed but it is too late to be fixed and she accepts defeat. John started out by preventing her from writing, telling her that it was the main cause of her problems. Then, he locked her in a room where the only person she could interact with was herself, and occasionally John. She is not even allowed to see her own child. John also speaks to the narrator using degrading words to show that he considers her to be his child and that she does not know anything about her own predicament. This is proof of how John looks down on his wife and oppresses her by calling her “little girl”. The narrator begins to see through John’s actions; realizing that he is just like the rest because he is not doing anything for her out of love, but instead for his own reputation and his belief that, as a man, he is automatically more vital than she is. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is an important piece of fiction to the first wave of feminism because it called out issues that many people refused to discuss because of gender norms. It told us that women can be just as intelligent, if not more, than men, and that women are just as important and essential to the growth of society. 
