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Gender Oppression in Literature

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During the time when self-restricted is seen as virtue, absence of purity is degraded, obedience presents credo, and selfless contribution been honored as true dignity. In “The Cult of True Womanhood”, Barbara Welter provides a detailed analysis of the characteristics that define an ideal woman in the 19th century, one of which is submissiveness. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” shows how submissiveness affects the protagonist while she struggles with her mental disorder, and the reader is able to see how this characteristic causes her delirium in the end of the story. Meanwhile, from different unique insights of two texts to explain submission influences oppression of woman back in centuries, and to understand the relations between male and female, therefore, study and figure out the solution in order to prevent repetition of history. Where men controls the majority of right of speak, women live in the world dominated by men, amounts of lack of communication and differences of social standing accumulated disappointment and misapprehension. In Welter’s article, emphatically points out “women were passive, submissive responders” and “man was ‘woman’s superior by God’s appointment, if not in intellectual dowry, at least by official decree” (Barbara Welter, 118). The story of Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” begins with the narrator’s monologue, express her impression of the place where her husband brings her to conduct ‘rest cure’ therapy due to the narrator having “temporary nervous depression-a slightly hysterical tendency”(Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 1). The tone of how the narrator describing the place sounds lifeless, “beautiful place, it is quite alone” “there is a delicious garden” “there were greenhouses, too, but they are all broken now” (Gilman, 2). John, the narrator’s husband, as well a high standing physician, assume what he thinks is the best for his wife but without asking her and negotiate with her own business. They could have conversation, but John’s decisiveness as a high standing physician monopolize his wife’s right to speak her idea, thus become first of the predominant reasons in further caused the narrator’s insanity. Beyond all doubt, a woman whose has accepted education having more power and having strength, “knows herself capable higher things”(Welter, 119). According to Welter, the fear of blue stocking, meaning “the eighteenth century male’s term of derision for educated or lite

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