“The Yellow Wall-paper” (读书笔记)

"Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, I have finally found out. The front pattern does move –and no wonder! The woman behind shakes it! Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast, and her crawling shakes it all over. Then in the very bright spots she keeps still, and in the very shady spots she just takes hold of the bars and shakes them hard. And she is all the time trying to climb through.  But nobody could climb through that pattern—it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads" (page 494).

 Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wall-paper is representing women in 19th century has suffering terribly always live in the man’s shadow;because they are so difficulty to getting out of men’s power. Also these passages are clearly representing the man’s power in the story, and the woman trying to get out from the control of her husband. The patriarchal role for women in the domestic life is to be in the cage, that’s why women try to escape. Of course The Yellow Wall-paper symbolizes that the man’s power is a cage for the woman, through the many women who are inside the wall paper. They are trapped and cannot “climb through that pattern”. As the passages show she wants to get out. “The woman behind shakes it!”. Also the “medicine” for her to rest is the order from the man -the narrator’s husband is a doctor. As a result, the narrator does not have any chance to challenge a doctor’s order. For this reason, her husband’s order same as the law for the patient-narrator. This shows her husband is strong and powerful person in the family. In fact, in the story the narrator needs to “climb through” her husband to get freedom.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wall -paper tells the reader how an early 19th century woman’s life situation is under the man’s power. As we can see this story talks about one unnamed young wife who has just had a new baby, then suffers with depression and her husband John is a physician. Although she knows she has problems in her health, she also knows what’s best for her, but her husband thinks she needs rest. It looks like he loves her and cares about her health. But he does not let her choose what she needs. In the other way she does not have voice in the family matters including her health; her husband controls everything. She wants to write something she likes, to feel better, but she is not allowed to do it. She can only write in secret,because “he hates to have me write a word”. Her life is a struggle to deal with her husband. Even though on the surface in the story it looks like her husband loves her, and to try to help her get healthy again, underneath he does want to control her.The Yellow Wall-paper is the symbol in the story. It symbolizes her husband’s power; the deep meaning is patriarchal society’s domestic roles make her husband more powerful and forces her to obey him. The yellow wallpaper room is supposed to be good for her to take rest, but it makes her health much worse. The narrator does not like the yellow wall paper room. As she says, “I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long.” This story also tells the reader that her doctor’s order for her to take rest all the time and to not write makes her more sick.

Gilman uses the wall paper to refer to man’s power, also in the story the wall paper symbolizes the narrator’s husband. The wallpaper had many women inside; not only one-woman was trap in the wall-paper. She uses the story to tell the society that women need help to get out of the situation of patriarchal control. “But nobody could climb through that pattern—it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads,” she imagines that the more women fight for freedom, the more women will be free.  This quote shows that the many women inside the wall-paper need someone to help get out, but also they need to help themselves. Which is more women joining to fight for freedom so that the wall-paper can be more easily broken, so women can be free for life. In the end she tries to pull down the yellow wall-paper to free herself and all of the women.