Ahmad Hidayatuloh

Male Dominance in the Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells about married women as a narrator
who lived with her husband in a colonial mansion. The narrator suffers from nervous
depression and her husband convinced her to rest in a room to recover, but the narrator insists
to not stay in that room because that room is not what she wanted to live. The narrator want
to live in a downstairs room for certain reasons, we can see from this passage “ I don’t like
our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the
window and such pretty old fashioned chintz hangings!” the narrator clearly states what she
wanted from that passage because for her that room has something a that she wanted. While
the other reason the narrator rejects that upstairs room because the yellow wallpaper that
annoys her so much “The colour is repellant, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean
yellow...I should hate it my self if I had to live this room long”.

Narrator husband, John hear what she had requested to move to another room in
downstairs,but John can’t grant her wishes first because he thinks that upstairs room more
comfy to her recovery “It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look
all ways and air and sunshine galore”.The second reason he rejects narrator idea to move
because the downstairs room is not enough for two persons and he can’t get a workroom “He
said there was only one window and not room for two beds, and no near room for him if he
took another”.

After John rejected the narrator request, she began to like the room “ I’m really getting
quite fond of the big room” but the narrator still hate the yellow wallpaper “all but that horrid
paper.” She so focused on that yellow wallpaper until she realized something inside that
wallpaper start to move “I got positively angry with the impertinence of it and the
everlastingness. Up and down and sideways they crawl” and her condition getting worse by
hallucinate seeing a woman figure inside the wallpapaer “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 it shakes it!” Finally, she can’t stand about her hallucination and rip off
the paper and become one with that woman figure that narrator sees over the yellow
wallpaper “I’ve pulled off most of the wallpaper, so you can’t put me back!”

As we can see from this story the narrator is the protagonist and the husband is
antagonist,the husband is an obstacle for what the narrator desire,through this story John the
husband control over the protagonist due to her condition he manages to make the narrator
 Ahmad Hidayatuloh

feel insecure,”And what can one do” it reveals woman or the narrator has no power to John,
constantly she keep saying that to keep in her mind that she powerless.”Hardly let me stir
without special direction” it means John really control the narrator.”What is it little girl?”
instead of wife John using word of the little girl to show that he is a man in the house, he took
a big role to decide what is to do with his family .Anothe proof that John control over the
narrator is when narrator afraid to write again because John forbid her to do that “And am
absolutly forbidden to work until I am well again.”