Influence of Emerson’s Self-Reliance on Gilman’s Yellow Wall-Paper

Influence of Emersons Self-Reliance on Gilmans Yellow Wall-Paper The great writer Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, trust thyself e genuinely center field vibrates to that iron string (p. 1033). How surprised he would be to find issue that a half century later this type of idea would end in a growing restlessness among American women unsatisfied with their lives and with their constituents in society - a society dominated by men with scant(p) or no place for women outside the home. One of these female writers who helped excrete the battle for domestic and social reform was Charlotte Perkins Gilman. One of her more curiously forceful works is The Yellow Wall-Paper, meant to highlight the submissive and highly undervalued role women play in marriages at the time. Through this work, Gilman expressed her inner frustrations with the servitude women had to project in their marriages during that time period, and she advocated her own brand of Emersonian non-conformity for women. By taking much(prenominal) a profoundly dismal outlook on married life, Gilman hoped to stir up other women to seek new roles not only in the domestic, and also public, arena. The Yellow Wall-Paper represents to a large degree what the feminist exercise of the late 19th century was about, and by analyzing both the story and context of its creation, it becomes apparent the type of interpretation Gilman made of Emersons work Self-Reliance. Although The Yellow Wall-Paper focuses on a wifes sudden decline into madness, the story brings forth a very important issue - that of womens roles not only in domestic life, exactly in society as well. It becomes abundantly apparent even from the scratch line few lines of the story that the wifes views concern her place in the marr... ... written nearly half a century earlier, but wished to apply it to women in lay to achieve a similar greatness through liberation. Evidently, both authors sustain achieved their goals and have become liter ary founders of a new American paradigm created during the 19th century, but transcending the boundaries of time even today. Works Cited and Consulted Boller, Paul. American Transcendentalism. mod York Capricorn Books, 1974. Emerson, Ralph. Self-Reliance. Ed. George McMichael. New York Macmillan Publishing Company, 1985. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. The Yellow Wallpaper. New York Feminist Press, 1973. ------. The maintenance of Charlotte Perkins Gilman An Autobiography. New York D. Appleton-Century, 1935. Kasmer, Lisa. Charlotte Perkins Gilmans The Yellow Wallpaper A Symptomatic Reading. Literature and Psychology. 36, (1990) 1-15.