The Yellow Wallpaper During the turn of the century, from 1865 to 1912, American women fought to achieve the freedoms and independence that are today now taken for granted. Women's roles in this era were primarily defined by men, often in one of many etiquette books that taught them a proper "code of manners" and categorically stated: "A woman's power lies in her refinement, softness and elegance. it is she who makes etiquette, and it is she who preserves the order and decency of society” (Harper, 1999, p. 1298). This was especially true for middle-class women, and men worked to keep them retained within society. home influences. The woman was expected to be “firmly anchored in her sphere of hearth and home” (Harper, 1999, p. 1298), tending to the needs of the family, tending to the children, and caring for the hearth. Women were expected to remain virtuous and pure, modest, pious in their faith, and submissive to their male counterparts. This was evident in the medical profession and in The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman demonstrates the arrogant attitude of men towards women when she highlights the fact that even her husband does not believe that she is ill, that she is simply suffering from " temporary attacks of nervous breakdown. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman and her husband rented a mansion for the summer so she could recover from the recent birth of their child. She rests in a bedroom upstairs, an old nursery, with peeling yellow wallpaper, which becomes her obsession. She describes its color as repulsive, almost revolting: an impure, smoldering yellow with a dull but sinister orange in places. She emphasizes its unpleasantness by exclaiming, “No wonder the kids hated it!” I would hate it myself if I had to live in this room for long. » Her husband forbids her from doing anything, especially writing, so she keeps a secret diary. She writes that when John comes in, she has to hurry and put the diary away, because he hates it when she writes a word (Harper, 1999, p. 1736). Her husband's sister, Jennie, looks after her and the nanny looks after their little boy. As her condition worsens, the woman becomes more and more obsessed with the wallpaper, trying to trace its patterns and becoming convinced that someone is stuck inside, a woman trying to get out...