...In the story, The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator slowly begins to go insane until she is beyond the point of no return. This all could have been avoided is she was shown proper attention when she first needed it. In the beginning of the story she began to show signs of some sort of illness. Both her husband and her brother said she was fine and there was nothing to worry about, even though there probably was, “Personally, I disagree with their ideas. Personally, I believe that congenial work, with excitement and change, would do me good. But what is one to do?” (648). On top of that, her one coping method, which was writing in her notebook, was banned by her husband because he thought that writing would just make things worse. These things...
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...The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, shows the slow progression of insanity the narrator/Jane experiences through the fixation of the yellow wallpaper. In the beginning the narrator seems to be stable, she expresses her shock and pleasure of vacationing at the Estate. We go on to learn the true reason and intent her husband John meant for the stay. John felt it to be necessary for a break, to her cure her nervous condition. By hindering her creativity and imagination, with the stifling role of mother and wife, lead her to become more and more unreliable. We question on several occasions whether if it is truly her illness causing the paranoia, or if it is John’s treatment causing her loss of sanity. As soon as...
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...“THE YELLOW WALLPAPER” BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN Introduction In the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1973) wrote “The Yellow Wall Paper”. This story can make a readers' mind think just by the way this story presents the main character of a woman and her ordeals as she lived a secluded life, as well as how her relationship with the man in her life is dealt. Some readers might think she is crazy and some may think she is depressed. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's, "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the story of a woman's descent into madness as the result of being isolated as a form of "treatment" when suffering from post-partum depression. The author, who is believed to be narrator as well, talks about her personal travel in to the world where an illness has brought her. All her thought and feelings are written in a journal and as she goes down in to the world that she has created in the confines of the room where she was kept. The story line presents that the narrator's mental condition is getting worse, leading to psychosis. Gilman explains the complexities of woman nature as she uses symbolisms to define the psychological realms of the plot. “The Yellow Wallpaper” The unnamed woman in this story (believed to be the author herself) fantasies about the yellow wallpaper are driving her mad. The protagonist experienced hallucinations and persistent thoughts over things. Crawling women, colorful artwork and a moving pattern depict the narrator's increased anxiety...
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...The story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells the story about a woman named Jane, who writes in her journal about a summer home her and her husband will be staying at. Her husband John, who is a physician assures others that she only has temporary nervous depression. Because of her illness she is not supposed to do anything active, including writing. She feels that writing and having freedom can help her get better, so she begins to write in a secret journal. Particularly when she writes in her journal she describes a disgusting yellow wallpaper she sees in her room. She becomes fixated on the wallpaper and instead of hating it, grows fonder of it. She becomes more and more obsessed with it that she starts to see a woman trying to escape. As the summer goes on she continues to write about the yellow wallpaper, and the woman trying to escape from the paper. She has completely gone insane when her husband breaks down the door and faints at the site of her creeping around, and peeling off all the wallpaper. The theme behind this story is that lack freedom can lead to insanity. Throughout Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the elements of fiction conflicts, symbolism, and characters all represent the theme, that lack of freedom can lead one to insanity. The first element of fiction that connects with the theme that lack of freedom can lead to one’s insanity is the conflicts Jane faces throughout the story. The first main conflict...
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...Kimberly Powers Analysis and Theory on “The Yellow Wallpaper” March 25, 2014 Professor Langston The Yellow Wallpaper was published in 1892 by Charlotte Perkins is a short story of one woman’s decline into madness. It can also be viewed as an accusation of shrewdness over creativity or the horrifying inequality in marriage back in the 1890’s, it depicts that back in the 1890’s the societal pressures were placed on women. Charlotte writes this short story so that the reader can see the dangers of rest as a form of cure. She is trying to prove that the method does damage to a person. A woman suffering from post-partum depression is driven mad by her over baring husband who allows her to do nothing more than to merrily exist. Her husband treats her like a child and confines her to a house in the country. Her husband doesn’t think there is anything wrong with her and that it’s all in her mind, she tries to write but it exhausts her to hide it from everyone, she is forbidden to “work”.( pg 1 The Yellow Wallpaper) Her husband is a physician and leaves her alone so often to “work difficult cases in town”. They chose a bedroom that is at the top of the stairs and takes up most of the floor and the wallpaper that was hideous. She keeps starring at it day in and day out until it looks as if there is someone was moving behind it, the wallpaper drives her insane and she finally tears it down. Unfortunately her husband does not give her any support. Also she isn’t allowed to go visit...
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...Charlotte Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a feminist’s tale of a woman who is spoken to like a child, ignored like a piece of furniture, and treated medically in a way that is horrible to most sensibilities. The horror she tolerates starring at the dreadful wallpaper day after day is really just a side effect of her abuse, and her frustrating lack of fulfillment, which was forbidden by a fool-hardy psychologist and enforced by the patriarchy of her husband. The short story was published in a New England magazine in 1892 and was received with mixed reviews. “Such a story ought not to be written” said one Boston physician. “Another physician, in Kansas, I think, wrote to say that it was the best description of incipient insanity he had ever seen” Crazy, or not, Gilman’s work was quickly recognized for its feminist message. “Gilman's story quickly evolved from a relatively obscure and subversive magazine piece of the late nineteenth century to a formative feminist classic” (St. Jean, 2002,). There are several examples of Gilman being spoken to by her husband the way a parent would speak to an anxious four year-old. “What is it little girl?” he said, “Don’t go walking about like that – you’ll get cold” (Gilman, in Kirszner, 2010, p. 465). “Bless her little heart!” said he with a big hug, “she shall be as sick as she pleases…[go] to sleep, and talk about it in the morning” (p. 466). Thrailkill confirms that The Yellow Wallpaper is indeed a feminist manifesto by...
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...As Gilman loses touch with herself and the outer world, she starts to realize her reality of her life. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a women suffers from postpartum depression and is prescribe the resting cure. As she is doing what her husband, an outstanding doctor, has told her to do, she becomes increasingly depressed and soon this results in her losing her insanity. As she losses her way of expressing herself and is doing what the doctor says, she is expected to conform to the doctor and the world around her. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Gilman she illustrates women’s struggles through this story by using symbolism, theme, and irony. The wallpaper is a symbol used throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The author states, “The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight” (649). The way this is worded can...
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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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...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: A Woman's Struggle Pregnancy and childbirth are very emotional times in a woman's life and many women suffer from the "baby blues." The innocent nickname for postpartum depression is deceptive because it down plays the severity of this condition. Although she was not formally diagnosed with postpartum depression, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935) developed a severe depression after the birth of her only child (Kennedy et. al. 424). Unfortunately, she was treated by Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, who forbade her to write and prescribed only bed rest and quiet for recovery (Kennedy et al. 424). Her condition only worsened and ultimately resulted in divorce (Kennedy and Gioia 424). Gilman's literary indictment of Dr. Mitchell's ineffective treatment came to life in the story "The Yellow Wallpaper." On the surface, this gothic tale seems only to relate one woman's struggle with mental illness, but because Guilman was a prominent feminist and social thinker she incorporated themes of women's rights and the poor relationships between husbands and wives (Kennedy and Gioia 424). Guilman cleverly manipulates the setting to support her themes and set the eerie mood. Upon first reading "The Yellow Wallpaper," the reader may see the relationship between the narrator and her husband John as caring, but with examination one will find that the narrator is repeatedly belittled and demeaned by her husband. On first arriving at the vacation home John chooses...
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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 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The Birth-mark by Nathaniel Hawthorne have two characters with many similarities. The character in The Birthmark is not the main character in the story, but plays an important role is Georgiana. Georgiana is a beautiful women except for the hideous birthmark on her face hence the name of the story The Birthmark. The character in The Yellow Wallpaper is the narrator, whose name we were never given. These two women have such a similar story, but are both so different at the same time. Georgiana and the narrator, women with almost identical stories, were different by minor discrepancies that changed the enter course of their stories. The women in The Yellow Wallpaper and The Birth-mark have...
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...Comparing Short Stories: A Rose for Emily and The Yellow Wallpaper Both Emily from Faulkner's A Rose for Emily and the female narrator from Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper experience extreme internal dramas. The women's internal conflicts cause both characters to lose sight of sanity and react in odd and different ways. These gothic tales both present ideas of women subornation, tradition, and the power of death. Nevertheless, they do so in different ways, and with very different stories. Both stories contain timely examples of women subornation with men overpowering and belittling their counterparts. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator is a prisoner, and simply remains a second class citizen. Treated as a child, locked away in a room, her...
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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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...Society, Oppression, Insanity, and the Women that Endure It. Throughout history there are countless examples of 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...
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