Influence of Emerson’s Self-Reliance on Gilman’s Yellow...

Influence of Emerson’s Self-Reliance on Gilman’s Yellow Wall-Paper The great writer Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string (p. 1033). How surprised he would be to find out that a half century later this type of idea would culminate in a growing restlessness among American women unsatisfied with their lives and with their roles in society - a society dominated by men with little or no place for women outside the home. One of these female writers who helped lead the battle for domestic and social reform was Charlotte Perkins Gilman. One of her more particularly forceful works is The Yellow Wall-Paper, meant to highlight the submissive and highly undervalued role women play in†¦show more content†¦This further indicates the dominant role he holds in the marriage. Her opinions are further subjugated by the fact that her husband is a physician, and practical in the extreme (p. 801). Therefore, the narrator feels as if she is doubly inferior, both as a wife and as a patient, and that she must take her husbands advice no matter how strong her own concerns. In fact, even her mental activities such as writing are regulated because her husband hates to have [her] write a word (p. 802). Even in her own family she can find no solace because her brother, also a physician, sides with her husband. The wallpaper seems to signify irrationality and a feeling of shame or dirtiness, qualities which are tied into the narrators own life. The color dirty yellow was chosen because it is most commonly associated with stains and the process of aging. The color possibly signifies how unclean the wife felt in her own marriage and the thought that she would grow old, trapped in such a condition. Furthermore, the pattern of the wall-paper is a constant reminder of the narrators degrading marriage. During the day it is described as a defiance of law....[The wallpaper]...slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you....The outside pattern is a florid arabesque, reminding one of fungus (p.807). This violence again ties in with her married life being somehow an act of degradation, and by