...Charlotte Gilman spent much of her life struggling with the effects of postpartum depression. A popular treatment for mental illness at the time was known as the rest cure. This treatment instructed patients, primarily women, to drop all responsibilities and to stay confined in their households. Creative thought, including discussion of their disease, was prohibited. Supporters of this cure believed that the best treatment was to ignore the problem (Jago, Shea, Scanlon, and Aufses, 1066). In Gilman’s short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator suffers from a scenario extremely similar to that of the author. Unable to discuss the narrator's illness directly, Gilman comments on depression and criticizes the sexist and ineffective use of the...
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...Depression The short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman brings to light the mistreatment of women’s mental health issues in the late nineteenth century in the American society. Rena Korb is a writer and editor says, “’The Yellow Wallpaper’ commands attention not only for the harrowing journey into madness it portrays, but also for its realism” ("The Yellow Wallpaper" 284). In the story "The Yellow Wallpaper," a woman falls into postpartum depression and her doctor recommended a treatment called the “rest cure,” which contributed to her madness because her condition was not yet understood and therefore never diagnosed. The story "The Yellow Wallpaper” was based on Gilman’s personal experience...
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...and were given the rest cure when they showed signs of a mental illness. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrators instability was not taken seriously by her husband. She was trapped in a house, in one small room, which was no where near beneficial to her health, and given the rest cure. In the article that Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote, “Why I Wrote The Yellow Wallpaper,” she explains her true experience behind the text. She shows how the rest cure and being treated like you’re helpless may just cause someone to become more crazy and lose touch with reality. The narrator is confined in a room which she believes is a nursery and slowly seems to be getting driven more insane as the days go by trapped in this room. She’s originally put in this room on account of her not being mentally healthy, but she only becomes worse. Once she entered the room she assumed it used to be a nursery for a few reasons. She explains, “It was a nursery first and then playroom and gymnasium, I should judge; for the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls” (Gilman, 1899). She truly wasn’t sure what the room was but was using her creativity to try to figure it out and imagine what this mysterious room she was confined to used to be. Some details hint to the room truly being some sort of mental institution or asylum. She was talking to her husband, John, about getting rid of the wallpaper which was driving...
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...pushed upon these type of people and it was called the rest cure. This is thought to be the inspiration of her story “The Yellow Wallpaper.” This of course was not her only written story. She wrote Women and Economic in 1898, Its Work and Influence in 1903, and Does a Man Support His Wife? In 1915 (“Charlotte Perkins Gilman”). Being a feminist was a large part of her writing. She “called for women to gain economic independence” and her writings help her points (“Charlotte Perkins...
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...The Yellow Wallpaper The attitudes towards women’s mental and physical health in the 19thcentury vary greatly from today’s views on practicing medicine. During that time, there was prevalence for the oppression of women and the general treatment for mental illness was a popular method known as resting cures. The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, serves as a critique of this popular treatment as it is an account of an unnamed narrator who descends into madness when receiving this type of treatment for her illness. The author, Charlotte Gilman addresses themes of madness and insanity through the narrator’s collection of journal entries, which comprise the story. In the beginning of the story, the narrator is confined to bed rest in a rented house with her physician husband, John, who believes that total rest is in her best interest for her condition. Gilman’s disapproving views over rest cures and doctor/patient relationships are initially revealed through the narrator’s description of her husband. The narrator describes him as a man who “scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figure”(355) and refuses to see his wife’s illness as a true condition. Through the narrator’s description, Gilman begins to point out the flaws in medicine’s understanding of mental illness and its shortcomings in treatment. The narrator writes in her journal as a way of escape from the monotony and solidarity of her treatment. While she loves and trusts her husband...
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...Through out the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the main characters finds herself led into a state of insanity. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator explains that she is suffering from post partum depression, leaving her husband to treat her with rest cure or bed rest. During this time, she is placed in a solitary room with walls covered in yellow wallpaper. The over abundance of social isolation the characters experience leads to their states of insanity. Through out “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator is locked away in an isolated room, which was supposed to cure her disorder, but instead, the treatment makes her worse. With the locked door and barred windows, she is secluded from the real world and what was once supposed to refresh her mind, dulls it. She finds herself only exposed to the yellow wallpaper that surrounds her, which is explained as a scattered and unorganized pattern. The constant isolation, time for examination and reflections of this wallpaper causes her to become further insane. “On a pattern like this, by daylight, there is a lack of sequence, a defiance of law, that is a constant irritant to a normal mind” (6.1). This shows that she is aware that this pattern is an annoyance to someone with a normal mind. Although, for her, she has nothing else to focus on; therefore she relies on her imagination to pass the time. Eventually she becomes obsessed with the wallpaper leaving her in an insane state of mind...
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...Gilman with The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes this depressing short story called The Yellow Wallpaper that really explores the views of the medical world during the 19th century and how male doctors looked at woman with the postpartum depression as if it was no worse than the simple cold. Gilman uses Jane, a young woman, in her story to help express her own views of the feminist world. Along with these views Gilman uses her own journey and experiences through life to depict how painful and unproductive the rest cure actually was for women that male doctors diagnosed them with. As Jane is locked away in this room she begins to discover the woman inside the wallpaper and as she begins to peel away the paper it’s a way she becomes...
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...“Black Swan” - “Yellow Wallpaper” Why can one only lose their self entirely or free oneself by creating an alternate reality in their own mind? If we compare the “Black Swan to the “Yellow Wallpaper,” maybe then we can begin to answer this question. “In the film 'Black Swan', Nina, always a white swan, begins to explore her Shadow (her black swan) for her lead role in 'Swan Lake'. I'm struck by the factors and presences pushing and pulling Nina into and out of her Shadow: namely, her creepy, infantilizing mother and her abusive, seducing director.” (Tally) Nina doesn't get to explore her notorious dark side in any remotely safe or healthy ways. Her mother has trapped her inside a pink, endless childhood--her bedroom full of stuffed animals, her mother physically dressing and undressing her, with Nina calling her 'mommy' in a needy, babyish voice which is the only thing, it seems, that will talk her mother back from the extreme edge of her bouts of rage.” (Tally) “Nor can Nina explore her Shadow in the world of the ballet--dominated by the forceful and dangerous director and a cut-throat group of ballerinas, many of whom seem to share Nina's eating disorder and her willingness to do anything to be on top in the company.” (Tally) “So from the beginning, is there any chance for Nina? At the end of the ballet, the swan queen can only find freedom in death: a fate that Nina shares.” (Tally) When Nina crosses over to...
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...enough) even become indistinguishable. As for the anonymous protagonist (the wife) of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” her continuous visions of a woman ensnared...
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...Compare and Contrast the Garden Party and the Yellow Wallpaper Katherine Mansfield’s “The Garden Party” and Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” are both centralized on the feministic views of women coming out to the world. Aside from the many differences within the two short stories, there are also similarities contained in Chopin’s. Both "Party" and "Wallpaper" are what we today might categorize feminist works of fiction. Both reveal women who are imprisoned, though one is imprisoned more literally than the other. “The Garden Party” and “The Yellow Wallpaper,” such as the same concept of the “rest treatment” was prescribed as medicine to help deal with their sickness, society’s views on the main character’s illness, and both stories parallel in the main character finding freedom in the locker rooms that they contain themselves in. Both “The Garden Party” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” display women discovering freedom from society’s standards during the setting’s time period. I'm going to discuss “The Yellow Wallpaper” first. The speaker in "Wallpaper" thinks she is on vacation, but she is obviously mistaken. Written to discredit an actual "cure" that the author herself was treated with, the story features a speaker who suffers while being treated with the same cure. The treatment is extremely sexist and demeaning to women. At the heart of the cure is the belief that female mental illness is rooted in the ovaries. It was also believed at the time the story...
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...Gender roles have always existed, but Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper” shows how these gender roles had extreme consequences for women in the 1900’s. “The Yellow Wallpaper” addresses several topics in De Beauvoir and Gilbert and Gubar’s texts by illustrating the passivity forced onto women, the aura of mystery that subsequently surrounds the feminine, and the mental illness that inevitably follows. Gilman’s text is a tale that warns of the dangers of forcing inactivity onto women. The narrator’s husband, a physician named John, diagnoses her with a “temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 648). He prescribes for her uninterrupted isolation: a “rest cure.” This was a common treatment for hysteria...
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...“The Yellow Wallpaper" is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The story is set in the late nineteenth century in America. It is a first person point of view of what disconnection and insanity can lead to. Many people believe this is a semi-autobiography of Gilman’s mental illness and treatment approach. In the story, Gilman takes the readers into the psyche of a young wife and mother, Jane, whom is powerless in her insecurities which no one truly understands or makes the attempt to try and understand. Her husband, John, has moved her to the country to recover from her illness. John is a physician who is trying to treat Jane for being “nervous”. Although his intentions are good, he goes about it in the wrong way. Dismissing any wishes she may have and not allowing her to express her feelings and or opinions. For example, Jane wants to be in a different room. The narrator states, “I don’t like our room a bit. I wanted the one downstairs that opened onto the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hanging! But John would not hear of it.” (pg. 346) Making an assumption from what Jane reveals, she is not able to care for her newborn child and has now fallen in to an extremely emotionally unstable state. "It is fortunate Mary is so good with the baby. Such a dear baby! And yet I cannot be with him, it makes me so nervous." (pg. 346-47. Gilman) Her husband, John, and the other people in her life, don't think she should do anything...
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...liberty and femininity in The Yellow Wallpaper and The Awakening I decided to examine the concept of femininity and liberty in a short story “The Yellow Wall-paper” from the American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman and in the book “The Awakening” from Kate Chopin. I chose these two books in order to demonstrate how society in the nineteenth century treated woman and how those woman were trying to escape from this concept. Femininity refers to set of behaviours and roles which are appropriate for women and judged by certain culture. In the nineteenth century were women expected to stay at home and wait for their husbands´ return each evening. Women should have these four attributes: piety, purity, submissiveness and domesticity. (Rula Quawas,2006) Women who had these attributes were considered happy and satisfied. It was also believed that there is a sharp line between home, the woman sanctuary, and the economic world because it is a hard world only for men. The Yellow Wallpaper The story begun with moving of the main hero and her husband to the colonial mansion. Her husband´s name is John and he is a high standing physician. They moved for a while because she had to undergo a rest-cure. This method of treatment of the main hero of The Yellow Wallpaper is Dr. Mitchell´s rest-cure for women which included no intellectual stimulation and no writing. Her brother is a physician as well and agrees with her husband, but she doesn’t think that the way they cure her is right. “So I take...
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...known feminist writers and social reformers. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman uses exaggerated literary elements such as setting, symbolism, and character to illustrate the dangers of the mistreatment and disregard of female intelligence during the early 19th century. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born on July 3, 1860 in Hartford, Connecticut. Gilman grew up in Providence, Rhode Island with her mother after having been abandoned by her father. Gilman’s mother refused to show any form of comfort or affection towards her daughter because her mother believed that this made women weak and did not want that for Charlotte. Gilman’s mother however would, on rare occasion, caress her daughter while...
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...The Yellow Wallpaper When reading “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, one may notice the true complexity of this short story. It is told in an odd, but very intriguing way. The story is told in a strict first person point of view, which includes a lot of personal thoughts from the narrator. The narrator Jane, who is also the main character, is suffering from nervous depression. As her cure, John, her husband physician, prescribed rest and solitude in a bedroom of a summer house. While confined to a yellow papered bedroom, the narrator takes us through her declining mental journey. Left all alone, Jane’s innocent mental state becomes an obsessive delusional survival situation for freedom, which leads to her mental demise. The narrator starts her writing by describing the beauty of the house her husband has taken her for their summer vacation. Her description is in romantic terms as an aristocratic estate or even a haunted house and wonders how they were able to afford it, and why the house had been empty for so long. This description of the house, initiates an uneasy feeling with the reader. She is lead into a discussion about her illness from a feeling she expresses that there is “something queer” about the situation (315). Jane suspects something is wrong with her, but she does not recognize what it is. She is diagnosed with “nervous condition.(316) She expresses that her doctor husband ignores the magnitude of her illness and any of her concerns in...
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