...the scope of formalist criticism, it is apparent that the setting in James Joyce’s Araby and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper affects the main character’s mental and physical state” “Araby” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” are both remarkable short stories, but the thoughts conceived after reading it are everything but short. Araby, written by, James Joyce is about a young character that lives in a neighborhood that appears to be dark and gloomy based solely on the author’s description of the houses and such. “An uninhabited house of two storeys at the blind end…” suggests that this neighborhood isn’t in paramount condition. On the other hand, the author makes several references to religious faith. For example, the Christian Brothers’ School, where the young character attends, or the Priest who has died prior to this story taking place, evokes this idea of purity. It is quite contrary that in a short story where the author paints a vivid image of gloom and despair, there are religious references that cause readers into a world of contradiction. In the same way Charlotte Gilman Perkins, author of The Yellow Wallpaper seeks to evoke a message of individual expression and successfully does so by recording the progression of the illness, through the state of the “yellow” wallpaper. Apparently, the bulk of the setting of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is in a room that the unnamed narrator has been forced to stay in by her husband, John, so that she may recover from what...
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...Krista Dorn Professor Aguilar English 1302-059 July 22, 2015 Narrator Analysis of “The Yellow Wallpaper” The short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, gives readers a first hand glimpse into the mind of a mentally disturbed woman fighting numerous and constant battles within herself and with others, one of them being post partum depression. The story is set in a historical period when it was typical for men to dominate over women. As illustrated in this story, the mentally disordered woman, possibly named Jane, is clearly at the mercy of her physician husband, John. He tells her what she can and cannot do, where she will sleep, and when she will take her medicine. Stetson consistently portrays the narrator as a progressively mentally disturbed woman that cannot seem to escape the thought that the wallpaper in her room takes on a life of its own while having some sort of power over her that she is not able to control. The unreliable narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” piques unceasing curiosity while describing more and more detailed and subjective ways she is reaching total insanity; telling the story from a first person point of view makes this story much more captivating than if told in a third person limited type narrative. By the woman’s early admittance that she is suffering from a temporary nervous depression, she immediately establishes herself as an unreliable narrator. An unreliable narrator is specifically defined as a...
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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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...The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, highlights the repressed position of most married women during the 19th century. The narrator struggles both at the hands of her family members and internally. Her husband John, a physician, makes an effort to alleviate his wife’s mental state by moving their family into an old style home located in a remote area and isolating her as much as possible. He determines that it is unhealthy for her to entertain, interact with their baby, even to write which she seems to enjoy a great deal. When approaching “The Yellow Wallpaper” one has to keep in mind the importance of the title itself. John decides on their bedroom in the new home and it is covered in yellow wallpaper that the narrator takes great issue with. Using reader response, it is evident that Gilman uses imagery and symbolism to merge the protagonist’s life with that of the “woman” behind the yellow wallpaper. Before an analysis is presented the reader must first understand the marital expectations and male to female dynamic during the time period to which Gilman is writing. Married women faced oppression at the hands of society as well as their husbands. The 1800’s were a time when the wife was to be seen and not heard. It was a general societal expectation that wives if financially secure could have no real issues of their own. This was also because they were not expected to think on their own. They were expected to only reflect the...
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...men who feel obligated to protect women. In fact, it has become such a standard of interaction between men and women that it has often led to a patriarchal society in which men are superior to women. The men, despite their genuine intentions, are often unaware of the negative effects that their dominating influences have on the women they love. Women in these societies often experience alienation, isolation, low self-esteem, and even insanity. The protagonists in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” both portray the subordinate position of women in late nineteenth-century society. “A Rose for Emily” is an unsettling tale of an aging spinster, Miss Emily, who clings to the past and lives in a world of her own making. Miss Emily is a mysterious character who was once a hopeful young woman from an affluent family but is transformed into a reclusive, eccentric old woman through the acts of her controlling father. Her community views her as having “a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town” (Faulkner 30); and she is a monument to the past in a small, modernizing southern town in the late nineteenth century. Throughout her life, her father routinely dismisses all of her potential suitors until the day of his death. Alone and betrayed, Emily is unable to accept his passing; and it is several days until the body is removed. She lives alone for many years until she meets a man, Homer Barron, who becomes her first true suitor...
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...Two stories, two individuals, and two different personalities coming together to create a suspenseful and spine-chilling form of literature to surly make the reader obtain the full experience. In Charlotte Gilman’s short story The Yellow Wallpaper, the storyteller is a patient with her husband as her caretaker who has been confined to a specific bedroom. This woman has been forced against her will to have no form of action to express herself which leads to an uncanny and incomprehensible withdrawal from reality. Another short story with similar uneasy narration written by author Joyce Carol Oates is called Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? exemplifying a woman who has decided it is time that she goes out and has some fun in the town...
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...As a psychology major, I loved reading Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”. I found the story very intriguing and quite disturbing- but that’s what made this story very appealing to me. For me, it was interesting to see the psychological breakdown of a character from a first person point of view- it made it all the more relatable. This story does not remind me of any others I have read or heard, however, I can relate to this story based on my knowledge of psychology and on my personal experience with being mentally ill such as depression as in this story. What makes this story even more haunting to me is the ending. It is somewhat unclear to me as to who Jane is or what eventually happens to the narrator at the end of the story. The significance...
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...Carolyn A. Holley English 227 27 June 2010 The Yellow Wallpaper: Analyzing Literary Madness A short story about a new mother, happily married to a doting husband-who also happens to be a well respected doctor- relaxing at a manor in the countryside does not sounds like the beginnings to a tale of paranoia and psychosis; but in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper it is exactly that. The setting in this story is what gives it its depth and gives relevancy to the plot. The Yellow Wallpaper gives insight into the deranged mind of woman whose obsession and delusions about particularly hideous wallpaper that causes her mental and physical state to creep into darkness. Gilman, herself, suffered from postpartum depression and had a history of mental illness which is the reason the story reads so convincingly. The author’s views on feminism and women’s roles in society in her own life and setting also come into play repeatedly throughout the story in the interactions with the main character. Imagine a sprawling colonial mansion surrounded by lush gardens, filled with airy rooms and rich furniture is what you find yourself calling home. Jane’s loving husband, John, takes care of all the finances, there is a nanny, Mary, to take care of your child, and your precious sister-in-law, Jennie, to keep the house in order fills the mansion with life. Does this scenario sound bad in any way to the? From the perspective of the main character this is absolute torture. The setting...
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...Analysis on “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman was born on July 3, 1860, in Hartford, Connecticut. Gilman was a writer and social activist during the late 1800s and early 1900s. She had a tough childhood. Her father, Frederick Beecher Perkins, but he abandoned the family, leaving Charlotte's mother to raise two children on her own. Gilman moved around a lot as a result and her education suffered greatly for it. Gilman married Charles Stetson in 1884 and the couple had a daughter named Katherine. Sometime during her ten year marriage to Stetson, Gilman experienced a severe depression and suffered a series of uncommon treatments for it. This experience is believed to have inspired her to the short story "The Yellow Wall-Paper" (1892). The story takes the form of undisclosed journal entries written by a woman who is supposed to be recovering from what her husband, a physician, calls a "temporary nervous depression”. This haunting psychological horror story chronicles the narrator's descent into madness, or perhaps depending on your interpretation, into freedom. The author’s use of setting, conflict and point of view, provide this short story with the drama needed to capture the reader’s attention. The author begins the story using the key element setting to keep the readers mind in a constant roam. The narrator's view of the setting is colored by her limited and troubled perspective. She sees the yellow wallpaper in the room as a mostly evil and troubling...
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...The Yellow Wallpaper: Narrator’s Perception Of Reality "The color is hideous enough and unreliable enough and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing. You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you." (Gildman, p. 71) The story of the Yellow Wallpaper tells us about the madness of the “nameless” main character as she is suffering from a nervous depression. Her husband john, a physician, takes her to a leased summer home to try to relieve her with rest-cure. Rather than curing his wife from her disorder, John worsens the effects sending her into a severe depression. The role of the yellow wallpaper plays a dominant role in the story reviling her insanity through her writings, her husband’s treatments that worsen her health; and the lady behind the wallpaper. The narration in the Yellow Wallpaper is written in a unique first person point of view. Because of this we are able to see the deterioration of her state throughout the whole story. The narrator of the story is isolated from the outside world only exposed through a barred window to look out. She has no contact with the outside world, except john and their housekeeper Jennie, which leads her to writing. John does not want his wife to write because he thinks it will diminish her treatment, but she does anyway, which is exhausting for her to do it in secret. As the narrators...
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...likely play the dominant role in decision-makings. Generally, male chauvinism is one of the major issues caused the gender discrimination. For instance, according to the Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman used the first person narrator to narrate that in order help her recover from the nervous depression, her husband stopped her from doing everything except taking a rest (Gilman 1899). The author used this narrative point of view to express how she was ignored, but incapability had no choice to change it. Moreover, the author intentionally emphasized her husband’s high social status while comparing with her menial work, which strongly represents the imparity between men and women. Through this writing style, Gilman modeled this female protagonist with unlimited potential but did not get acceptance, was asked to give up writing and even her imagination was deprived. All these details symbolized that she was bound up in fetters of male chauvinism. Furthermore, Gilman used abundant descriptions of the repellent yellow wallpaper and her attitude to express how tightly she was tied by the male chauvinism. Especially, this dull yellow wallpaper plays a vital role in symbolizing the discrimination of women, which strongly affected Gilman’s mind and finally made her crazy (Gilman 1899). For looking at this ironic yellow wallpaper, Gilman saw a woman who was imprisoned like her, so she attempted to struggle to the free of herself, which effectively shows how humble the woman social roles were. Also...
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...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 was written that women were incapable of much mental activity, and...
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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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...Outline * Story of an Hour and Yellow Wallpaper have challenges that were faced by the protagonists, setting looked to be in the same era with men being in charge of their wives lives. * Both women were emotionally and psychically trapped in their relationships * Both wanted freedom from their husbands * Both protagonists had an illness, which lead to had an opposite effect on both characters * Mrs. Millard had a heart condition and the narrator would develop a mental illness * Mrs. Millard had the news break slowly to her, in the end her death was led by joy * The narrator in Yellow Wallpaper was confined in a room with wallpaper she disliked, the husband would say nothing is wrong with her; it ‘s just an temporary nervous depression. * The spouses position in the household * The husbands are the main income earners * Story of an Hour, had joy to learn of husband’s death * What their wife says don’t matter, would start to show resentment towards husbands, even though they would mean no harm Family relationships, especially involving spouses can create difficulties and challenges for one or the other, in-turn could create an impact in their relationship. Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” are short stories centralized on the view of two married women, the challenges they endure in their relationships and coping with their spouse. Women wanting to have...
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...In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses the narrator’s restraint of self-expression and inevitable insanity, to illustrate humanity’s need for creative outlet and emotional expression. The narrator is put into a position where she is forced to hide her fear and anxieties to convince others that she is winning the fight against her depression. However, her silence only has the opposing effect. The narrator’s further progression of her illness due to her repression, her need for expression through writing, and her inevitable insanity all point towards humankinds need for self-expression. Instead of being healed by her bed riddance, the narrator falls further into depression and fear. The narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper is an...
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