...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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...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 Baby Yellows “The Yellow Wallpaper”, a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is an unnerving tale about a woman and her spiral into psychosis. Mirroring the author’s actual experiences with depression and the “resting cure”, the story criticizes medical care that ignores patient concerns and deprives them of emotional outlets that could have been beneficiary towards a healthy mind. Set in the late nineteenth century, “The Yellow Wallpaper” illustrates the psychological effects of the popular “resting cure” and how the narrator is influcenced by it. While the illness the narrator has is never actually said, it is very heavily implied that she is suffering from postpartum depression. Eventually, her husband’s reliance on the “resting cure” and denying her healthy mental activities is what causes her depression to grow into postpartum psychosis. Postpartum depression is a form of depression typically affecting women after childbirth. Symptoms of postpartum depression include hallucinations and delusions, extreme agitation or anxiety, overwhelming fatigue, bizarre behavior, mood swings, inability or refusal to eat or sleep, and over worrying about the infant. The narrator showcases all of these symptoms, leading to the heavy assumption that she is suffering from postpartum depression. The narrator regularly experiences hallucinations, seeing a woman trapped behind bars in the pattern of the wallpaper. Gilman writes, “The front pattern does move- and no wonder! The woman...
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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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...of Them All? Has darkness ever covered everything in your room before? How difficult was it to find the path to the door with just a sliver of light coming from underneath the door? Being completely engulfed by darkness can have a negative effect on some individuals after a period of time. As a result of this darkness, the feeling of helplessness begins to be released from one’s body in the shape of a noose as it slowly smothers its prey. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, author of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” is known for her feminist approach in her writings. In the story, husband and physician, John, questions the nameless narrator’s mental state, for he takes her to an isolated house and has prescribed his wife to several months of “the rest cure”. Being kept away from society with only her thoughts and the room she lays in day after day, the narrator slowly begins to question herself and tries to discover her identity within the wallpaper. Gilman uses setting, symbolism, and irony in “The Yellow Wallpaper” to illustrate that the lack of autonomy can negatively affect a person’s mental instability. Because the story takes place in a feminist era, Gilman shows how the husband has complete dominance within the setting of the story. In the beginning, the narrator, whose name is never stated, is brought to a house on the countryside by her husband, John, who happens to be her physician as well. The narrator expresses in her journal, “[The house] is quite alone, standing well back from...
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...The Yellow Wallpaper The Yellow Wallpaper Determining Abnormality In The Yellow Wallpaper the woman in question is clearly suffering. She does not get to see her own child, she cries easily, and gets little to no sleep at night because of the wallpaper in the room. “…and I did not make a very good case for myself, for I was crying before I had finished.” (Gilman) This fulfills one of the seven criteria for determining abnormality. The second criteria is Maladaptiveness which is fulfilled throughout the story as she starts to withdraw from her husband and his sister, keeping secrets from them as well as, toward the end of the story, being suspicious of them. “…but it exhausts me a good deal – having to be sly about it,” (Gilman) In the end the woman in the story believes that she ‘escaped’ from the wallpaper this fulfills the third criteria Statistical Deviance. “’I’ve got out at last,’ said I, ‘in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!’”(Gilman) The fourth criteria, Violations of the Standards of Society, is fulfilled when she tears down the wallpaper although this in and of itself isn’t all that abnormal her reasoning was. “’I’ve got out at last,’ said I, ‘in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!’”(Gilman) Another way she fulfills this is when she crawls around on the floor at the end of the story which causes her husband to faint. “I kept on creeping just the same,”...
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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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...Justin Weber Professor Stover English 1302 Paper A/ 3:00 05/03/2014 “The Yellow Wall-Paper” “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story about a woman who moves to a house with her physician husband, John, who orders her to rest to help with her “nervousness.” After a while of being alone, she begins to see a woman coming out of the mysterious wallpaper and becomes obsessive. Near the end of their rental, she locks herself in the room to pull down the wallpaper and free the woman trapped inside. As John arrives and unlocks the door, he faints upon seeing his wife. The story concludes with the woman circling the room, stepping over her husband. The central idea is to show how when one is oppressed and denied the opportunity to be free, it can often have dangerous side effects. "The Story of an Hour" "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin is the story of Mrs. Louise Mallard, a woman with a heart condition, whose sister has arrived at her house to inform her of the death of her husband, Brently. Mrs. Mallard immediately bursts into tears crying into her sister's arms before retreating by herself to a vacant room. Once inside the room, Mrs. Mallard becomes overwhelmed with joy at the thought of the freedom she will now have. As Mrs. Mallard leaves the room, the front door is opened and Mr. Mallard unexpectedly walks in, unaware that he was thought to be dead. Mrs. Mallard, at the sight of her husband, is overcome by her heart condition and dies...
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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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...What a Woman Desires, She Must Fight For The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Gilman in 1891, was written as a result of the author’s experience after seeking treatment for chronic nervous breakdowns. Her treating physician, Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, who was the specialist mentioned by name in the story, prescribed a “rest cure”, which consisted of little to no physical activity, and only two hours of mental activity each day. The “rest cure” was typically prescribed to women, perhaps as a means to keep them in their proper place in society. Gilman, who may have been considered to be a feminist in the late 1800s, used the patterned wallpaper as a symbol of the entrapment and repression of women in society. Fredrick Douglass, former slave and famous advocate for human rights in the late 1800s, said of women: [A] woman should have every honorable motive to exertion which is enjoyed by man, to the full extent of her capacities and endowments. The case is too plain for argument. Nature has given woman the same powers, and subjected her to the same earth, breathes the same air, subsists on the same food, physical, moral, mental and spiritual. She has, therefore, an equal right with man, in all efforts to obtain and maintain a perfect existence (Douglass) Women’s rights in society have grown by leaps and bounds throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty first century, however, the traditional attitude of male superiority and the mold of the woman’s role still lingers in...
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...swollen eyes and swolle as there. What did it mean? Why was this st uffed up, red, with woman at the fire turned round. Her face, pu en lips, looked terrible. She seemed as th hough she couldn't understand why Laura wa What was it all about? And the poor face puc tranger standing in the kitchen with a basket? "All right, my dear," said tthe other. "I'll thenk the young lady." And again she began, "Yo an oily smile. ckered up again. ou'll excuse her, miss, I'm sure," and her face Laura only wanted to get o e, swollen too, tried out, to get away. She was back in the passage s lying. She walked straight throug e. The door opened. gh into the bedroom, where the dead man was "You'd like a look at 'im, e afraid, my lass,"—and now her voice soun over to the bed. "Don't be , wouldn't you?" said Em's sister, and she b nded fond and sly, and fondly she drew down brushed past Laura n the sheet—"'e looks a picture. There's nothi along, my dear." Laura came. There lay a young man, fa hing to show. Come away from them both. Oh, ast asleep—sleeping so soundly, so deeply, t ere blind under the that he was far, far h, so remote, so peaceful. He was dreaming. N Never wake him up again. His head was sunk iven up to his dream. What did garden-partie k in the pillow, his eyes were closed; they we es and baskets...
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...Yaqi Wan Instructor: Joshua Weathersby EN 210 September 20, 2015 Feminist For the first paper, I want to talk about a fiction called “The Yellow Wall-paper” which made a profound impression on me. This short novel is written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman who is a well-known American novelist and wrote so many works about feminist. She also made a huge contribution of feminist movement from 19 to 20 century. If we want to know well about a fiction, the first thing we need to do is to understand the experience or background of the author. According to the introduction of Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the book “The Norton Anthology American Literature”, she was born in Hartford, Connecticut and had an unfortunate childhood. When she was young, her father divorced with her mother. Then, she lived a hard life with her father. Maybe because of this reason, she showed a high degree of autonomy and independence in her young age. Gilman got married in 1884, and had a daughter. However, her marriage is not so lasting and it ended in 1888 (484). Housework always troubled her and made her almost breakdown. As for this fiction which called “The Yellow Wall-paper”, it was published in 1892 and this novel was written based on Gilman’s life experience. At the beginning, the heroine was send to a villa which was in a remote suburban for recuperating by her husband, because she suffered from mild postpartum depression. She was forced to accept medical treatment in this villa, and lived like...
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...In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator and her husband John are renting a house for three weeks. Her husband, who is a physician, believes she suffers from temporary nervous depression. “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression” (Gilman 275). He makes her stay in a room and orders her to get as much sleep as possible. He believes it is best for her not to write or do any activity she enjoys. Being confined to a room, she becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper and believes a woman is trapped inside the paper. She eventually tears all the wallpaper off and says the woman is now free....
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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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...The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman about a woman suffering from postpartum depression, where she is under her husband’s orders in the mandatory resting cure in bed hopes to get rid of her illness. This leads to her slowly going insane from being locked in the yellow room with nothing to do. Gilman’s use of the color yellow can be seen as ironic because, while typically associated as being a cheerful, joyous and warm color. She uses the yellow room in ways one does not at first associate with the color, creating a powerful symbol for the different emotions displayed in the text. One of the emotions expressed by the color of yellow is acting cowardly. This can be seen throughout the story when Jane is...
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