Reading "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was very interesting to me. The story was very bizarre and had many different themes. Although the story's plot was mainly about Gilman's mental illness and her treatment that went wrong, I was interested in a different theme. A few times in the story, Gilman makes sarcastic remarks against marriage or how she was controlled by her husband. After reading the story, I read Gilman's biography and found that she was a feminist and felt very strongly about women's rights and how women are often times "trapped" in a marriage. This brought me to ask the question, "What was life like for women living in the 18th century?"
While researching 19th century life of women, I learned a lot of things. For most households during this time, men were the head of the household. Women were usually married and if they weren't, they were assisting a parent or master. The pressure was high for men and women to marry, and some married at the age of thirteen. Women usually married for economic and social reasons, not romantic reasons. Once married, women were the property of their husbands.They cared for the child's every need, and most women had many children. Women were seen as inferior to men, even though they were keeping the households going. They fed and clothed the children, took care of household duties, and cared for their husbands. A wife had few legal rights. She could own no property, and divorce was rarely granted. A wife's husband could legally beat his wife for disobedience. Some women ran away from bad marriages, and were advertised as if they were runaway slaves.
http://www.loyno.edu/~kchopin/new/related/gilman.html
Most women did hours of chores a day, like cooking cleaning, ironing, and sewing. Wives trained their young daughters to me wives and mothers. Girls helped with cleaning, caring for younger children, washing clothes, and cooking. Every housewife made candles in the fall. Candle making was an all day, back breaking job. Women were seen more as objects than real people, and were also treated as such.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was raised around stronger women, which made her opinion on women's roles stronger than most. Her father left her family when she was a child, leaving them in poverty. Gilman was around her aunts a lot, because her mother was ill. During her youth, Gilman's friends were mostly male, and she was definitely a "tomboy". She had a good education, and became a well-rounded woman. She always knew she was different, and refused to conform to the domestic lives that so many other women had lived. She married, had a child, and divorced. She had a mental breakdown after the birth of her daughter, which led her to eventually write "The Yellow Wallpaper". She was deeply involved in the feminist movement. She argues that throughout history, women's contributions to society weren't being utilized because of the constraints put on women.
http://www.iroquoisdemocracy.pdx.edu/html/colonialwoman.htm
Women's roles in the eighteenth century changed somewhat in the nineteenth century, with more women being independent and having businesses. If Charlotte Perkins Gilman could see society now, and the strides that women have made in society, I think that she would be thrilled.
