"The Yellow Wallpaper": The Silent Scream of A Woman
Thw Walls of the Society from Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Point of View
**_The Yellow Wallpaper _**is a short story created by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892. She not only demonstrates a woman's psychological breakdown within the story but also she harshly criticizes the contemporary systems of the patriarchal society and the medical treatment. Actually the short story functions as a symbol of the protagonist's suppression and entrapment within both the society and her marriage.
_ The Yellow Wallpaper by Gilman_
The powerful story is narrated by an unnamed protagonist who is accepted as pscyhologically ill especially by her environment including her own husband who is a physician. In this respect, Gilman intentionally does not give her a name, because she tries to illustrate how the society ignores women's pains and their feelings. In addition, she also reveals the neglection of the system of medicine in the story through the husband figure who does not care the feelings and pains of the patient although he is a doctor. So, he just strongly advises her **only a rest cure **without doing nothing. In this regard, she declares that writing is the only thing that heals her, but even her writing is banned by her husband because he believes that writing is too much for a woman. Thus, Gilman clearly criticizes the suppression of women's voices and the glorified the male authority within the society.
The another significant symbol in the story is the yellow wallpaper and the trapped women within it. The unnamed protagonist declares that she shows a woman who is trapped between the wall and the wallpaper who waits for a help. In this regard, the drawings on the wallpaper demonstrates the chaos within the woman and also the lack of communication with the outside.
Also, the trapped woman both represents the unnamed wife who suffers from lonely within her marriage and the common conditions of the women in 19th century who are trapped within the houses and ignored because of the expected gender roles. So, it is clear that she is not the only woman who suffers under the patriarchal society and the inflexible gender roles. At the end of the stroy, she begins to crawl on the floor which is accepted as a sign of madness, but it actually represents her freedom by breaking away the socail roles.