Research Paper on:
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper and Liberation

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. BBgilmwp.doc LIBERATION AND "THE YELLOW WALLPAPER" Written by B.  Bryan Babcock for the Paperstore, Inc., May 2001 Introduction We often think of liberation in terms of people oppressed in foreign countries, and fighting for their rights. Personal imagination  can cause us to fight just as actively, even though initially it may not be as obvious. Such is certainly the case in the turn of the century work  (1891) The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Imagination I do not believe that our narrator initially knows that her imagination is the liberating key out of her social prison.  As she gives it more and more permission to have free reign, I believe she begins to see the power that it does indeed have, both for her, and  for her freedom to continue writing. Balance of the status quo Before our narrator has progressed ten sentences, she says, "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that  in marriage." And before ten more sentences have gone by she says. "If a physician of high standing, and ones own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is  really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency--what is one to do? My brother is also a physician, and also of high standing, and  he says the same thing." The stage has been set. We know that if there is to be any "liberation" of our narrator at all it will be  a pitched battle, for now only is she fighting the status quo, but she is fighting family attitudes as well. Yet she does recognize that their perception is different