Women not only need their own room, but also freedom

Virginia Woolf mentioned that women need their own room and small amount of money to write a fiction and poem and her idea can be found in The Yellow Wall Paper as well. In The Yellow Wall Paper, the narrator seems to have her own space and time but she feels like she is imprisoned. What her husband does look like he cares about his wife, but in truth, he ignores her feeling and treats her at his will. I think the status of her husband and her brother worsen the situation. As both John and her brother are a physician of high standing, their opinion on her symptom dominates and leads to ignoring what she feels and wants. Her symptom gets worse but John thinks that his wife is improving.   

I think both Virginia Woolf and Charlotte Stetson well describes many women’s circumstance in late 19^th and early 20^th century. Many women had less power and freedom than men and women tend to have a less access to education and lack of financial support. I think this gap creates intense difference between two sex. In The Yellow Wall Paper, the status of John and narrator’s brother, the prominent physician, make narrator less powerful and less freedom. I think this unequal status between her and her husband, and lack of freedom that she had was the main cause of her illness.

Support is Big

I think Virginia Woolf’s idea of “a room of one’s own” is not the only things women writers need because in the Yellow wallpaper the narrator has money and a quiet room. She clearly has something wrong with her psychologically but it is not being treated properly by locking her into a room by herself with her thoughts. It is actually making her go crazy and is not able to express herself in any form of expression yet alone literature. “I did write for a while in spite of them; but it does exhaust me a good deal—having to be so sly about it, or else meet with heavy opposition.”(Stetson pg. 648) This shows that she wants to write but without the support of her husband and brother she finds it to be rather difficult. So I would add to Virginia Woolf’s idea that some women also need support from their family. The yellow wallpaper directly challenges Woolf’s idea and tries to show that there should be a couple of other additions added to make it fit a wider audience of women writers. Woolf’s idea is not wrong but it is not the whole truth behind being a successful women writer.

A Room of One's Own and The Yellow Wallpaper

It is true that other writers in this unit—Women and Literary History all agreed with Woolf’s idea that women should have their own free, private, secure and comfortable space. In The Yellow Wallpaper, a woman was prisoned and forbade working by her husband. Then she lost her mind and became depression. The yellow wallpaper in her room is represented for the physical and mental prison of female in the society. From Borderlands, “Culture is made by those in power-men. Males make the rules and laws; women transmit them”. Generally speaking, we lived in a male-dominant society. Males always play the most important roles in any fields and any period of time. Females are always controlled by men power. The woman in The Yellow Wallpaper lives under the control of her husband, John. She tried to get rid of the control of her husband. However, she cannot. It seems her husband treated her well, in fact, her husband did not care about her feeling. Women usually did not have the privilege as to share equal human rights and freedom as men did. However, women also have the ability to think and write independently as an individual, not just be considered as the property of their husbands. Both Woolf and The Yellow Wallpaper advocate that women should have equal human rights as males do.

Woolf, Silko, and the Perception of Women

It's no secret that the other writers from this unit would agree with Virginia Woolf's basic theme in A Room of One's Own-- that women's freedoms have been restricted. It's a prevalent phenomenon across both cultures and time periods, and feminist writers have put great effort into exposing its wrongness, albeit in their own unique ways. Woolf's novel focuses on how women's lack of proper resources have suppressed their creative endeavors, while Leslie Marmon Silko's short story "In the Combat Zone" deals with the physical violence that men often exert upon women. Despite the differing topics, connections to Woolf can be found in Silko's work. Men see women as easy targets, she says, and believe it's within their right to intimidate women, but a rather surprising note is that she doesn't place the blame for this violence solely on men. Consider the following passage:

"Only women can put a stop to the 'open season' on women by strangers. Women are TAUGHT to be easy targets by their mothers, aunts, and grandmothers who themselves were taught that 'a women doesn't kill' or 'a woman doesn't learn how to use a weapon.' Women must learn how to take aggressive action individually, apart from the police and the courts."

This passage immediately makes me think back to Woolf's commentary on Fernham's financial standing. In both cases, there's a perceived "right" way for a woman to live her life that's ultimately detrimental to her being. Moreover, it's a perception that's ingrained in our society and passed down across generations. With Woolf, the phenomenon is explicitly stated: women are limited because they're expected to bear and raise children as well as look after the house. In Silko's case, it's implied, but the message is the same-- that women need not bother with man's work. Gender roles work to reduce and pigeonhole women's societal value in both cases.

If there's a difference in the two arguments, it's with regards to the action that should be taken to correct society's gender disparity. Throughout her novel, Woolf argues that women need to be provided with the resources to flourish. In her mind, the belittling of women should be recognized, and reparations should be arranged accordingly. Silko takes a more direct stance-- she thinks that women need to take hold of their situation and act to blur the divide between men and women. Their solutions may take different forms, but the message contained in them is the same: women are equal beings, and deserve to be recognized and treated as such.

A room of one's own and the yellow wallpaper

In “a room of one’s own”, Virginia Woolf argues that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she intends to write a fiction. The arguments of Woolf represent a feminist thought in 20^th century. She criticized that the society and outer conditions at that time deprived most woman of making some difference in literature. Woolf is more likely to give her arguments with a historical thought. She not only speaks out for the women at that time, but also in a broadly historical viewpoint.

For me, I pretty agree to Woolf’s arguments that a woman needs a private, secure and comfortable space to write. Since actually most women do not have much time of their own, because they have to do much heavy housework. Therefore, they could gradually lose the willing to make some time write a fiction. On the contrary, most men have much more freedom than women.

In “the yellow wallpaper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman also comes up with similar arguments like Woolf. The narrator in the book was tortured by a psychology disease which was actually worsened because of the inequality relationship between her husband and herself. However, her husband who is a famous physician tried to “cure” her by his own idea without asking her advice, which is the reflection of the male-dominated culture at that time. Even though, the narrator has her own room and she is also in a rich family, but actually she does not really have her own “room” where to do something she intends to do, like writing. Since, the narrator cannot even choose the wallpaper in her room. Besides, the yellow wallpaper can indicate that women suffer inequality and oppression from the society and outer conditions. In my opinion, the room should be like what Woolf argues that is actually a symbol of freedom which is not belong to women at that time.

Yellow Wallpaper and A room of ones' room

In the Yellow Wall Paper, the author had depression after giving birth. Her husband made her have rest in an old house. His made daily plan for her and treated her as a child. The author could not do whatever she want and could not write and see her child. She was imprisoned in a room with yellow wall paper. I think this is sexual discrimination and male chauvinism.

In a room of one's room, Woolf had the same unfair experiences. When Woolf wanted to go to library, the administrator told she that she needed have the accompany by a male staff to get into library. There is sexual discrimination. In the yellow wallpaper, the author realized the behavior of women can not be controlled by public policy. She needs to fight back to have real freedom. But in Woolf 's opinion, woman need to have money and room to write a book. I do not agree Woolf's opinion. I think the most important thing is that fight back the discrimination. The discrimination is the main problem. If women have enough money and room to write, their work can not be valued due to discrimination.

Women's right and freedom to write

In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf mentioned money as the primary element that prevents women from having a room of their own, which means having money is extremely important. Since women do not own power, their creativity has been limited throughout the ages. “Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely.” She uses this quotation to explain why so few women have written successful poetry. She insisted that the novel writing is more easily to starts and stops frequently, therefore, since women must deal with frequent interruptions because of disturbing of losing a room of their own in which they can write, they are more likely to write novels than poetry. Therefore, without money, women will always be in the second place to their creative male counterparts, which indicted that at the time of Woolf’s writing, women were less successful writers.

In The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, the woman is also confined in a room. However, Stetson she considered a room of one’s own is limited and belittling instead of creative, private, and free as Woolf did. But they both agree that women are oppressed when they are writing. The woman in Yellow Wallpaper is in this depressed situation. She loved writing but his husband prevented her from writing. “There comes John, and I must put this away, he hates to have me write a word.” This story shows that women are robbed of opportunity both professionally and socially because of societal norms, and emphasized on the weakness of women’s voice and the unfairness between two genders in the society at that time, further appealed for the equality.