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The yellow wallpaper charlotte perkins gilman analysis
The yellow wallpaper charlotte perkins gilman analysis
Changing roles of women in twentieth century literature
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A Vivid Writing
How can your feelings affect you while writing? Is it good to express yourself in your writings? Many authors use their writings as a way to free themselves or escape from the real world. An example of this is Charlotte Perkins Gilman who wrote a short story named The Yellow Wallpaper (1892). In this short story, the author used her own experience with her depression after giving birth to share how she feels. Gilman shows in her writing how the perception of the society influences in a women illness, in which the best solution was isolated her.
The social context in the nineteenth-century represented women just as housekeepers which made Gilman’s recuperation more frustrated. In The Yellow Wallpaper, when the narrator is diagnosed with post-partum depression and the solution was to maintain her far
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After she was diagnosed with depression and has to stop her daily routine, the narrator represents her as the women trapped behind the wallpaper. In the article Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” A Surrealistic Portrayal of a Woman’s Arrested Development says that after her depression in 1890, she “transferred her own life experience into a poignant account of a woman’s decline into madness” (Hall 4). Gilman wanted to share her vivid experience with other women. In The Yellow Wallpaper says “the woman behind it is as plain as can be”(Gilman). This particular abstract of the story shows that the narrator reflects the woman as “plain” which mean as simple as she could be.
In the story, Gilman also shows the women behind the paper as someone who wants to escape. It is clear that she was reflecting herself in the wallpaper. When she says in the story “the faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (Gilman). After she finds the women trapped behind the wallpaper, she is more obsessed in trying to understand
These thoughts always seem to be optimistic and minimizing of her symptoms. This reflects the standard view of mental illness in the 19th century, which assumed the condition, was just a temporary state of over expressed emotions within a woman. (Gilman. 956) Gilman herself however, used imagery and symbolism to express her ideas concerning her mental illness and the patriarchal ideals that surrounded them. The yellow wallpaper in the story symbolized Gilman’s state of mind. At first, like her depression, the wallpaper was simply an eye sore. It was not disabling to the room however, made it not as appealing as before. As the story progresses, Gilman forms an obsession with the wallpaper. This represents the declining of her mental state and the obsession she developed with her life conditions. We can see the mental illness is now fixated in her like she is fixated on the wallpaper. The wallpaper’s distracting features controlled her mind like her husband controlled her. She was mostly alone when staring vastly into the wallpaper. She begins to see humanly images in the paper. This becomes her sense of social stimulation that her husband forbids her to have. She becomes disgusted with the wallpaper as she is likely disgusted at her disease for disabling her and her husband for limiting her freedom. The humanly image soon develops into “a woman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wall-Paper”, is a first-person narrative written in the style of a journal. It takes place during the nineteenth century and depicts the narrator’s time in a temporary home her husband has taken her to in hopes of providing a place to rest and recover from her “nervous depression”. Throughout the story, the narrator’s “nervous condition” worsens. She begins to obsess over the yellow wallpaper in her room to the point of insanity. She imagines a woman trapped within the patterns of the paper and spends her time watching and trying to free her. Gilman uses various literary elements throughout this piece, such as irony and symbolism, to portray it’s central themes of restrictive social norms
Gilman herself suffered from post-partum hysteria and was treated by a famous doctor of the era, one who prescribed his famous "rest cure", the same cure the female narrator cannot tolerate and defies in The Yellow Wallpaper. In this story the narrator remains nameless and there is good reason for it. She feels as if she has no identity or control over obtaining fulfillment and unity and satisfaction in life. Her husband is a doctor who also prescribes complete rest for her and is opposed to her doing the one thing that seems to give her a unique voice, writing. Thus, the narrator defies her...
In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, women were often portrayed as submissive to men. Women were seen as oppressed by society as well as by the males in their lives. Both of Gilman’s bodies of works, “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Turned”, illustrate the fight for selfhood by women in a demoralized and oppressive environment. The narrator’s escape from her unbalanced marriage and captivity is her complete loss of sanity. Mrs. Marroner overcomes her husband’s infidelity and emotional control by taking in the vulnerable Gerta and leaving her husband. Their situations cause them and readers to start questioning the “naturalness” of gender roles.
After the birth of her daughter Katharine, she developed postpartum depression which usually arises as a result of hormonal changes, psychological adjustment to motherhood, and fatigue. For years, she battled with this disorder suffering from “a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia - and beyond” until going to an infamous neurologist by the name of Silas Weir Mitchell. Weir advised Gilman to abide by his rest cure, forbidding her from working another day in her life. “..He concluded there was nothing much the matter with me and he sent me home with solemn advice to ‘live as domestic life as far as possible (245)”. Like the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” this did not make Gilman better but worsened her distress. She obeyed the doctor’s directions only for over three months before she came “so near the border line of utter mental ruin that [she] could see over” (245). Then she abandoned the rest cure and moved to California, divorced her husband, remarried, and dedicated herself to the world of literature and politics (232). Unlike Gilman, the narrator succumbs to insanity at the end of the story. Gilman uses this alternative ending to her story to alert national attention to the problem of the resting cure and not “drive people crazy, but to people from being crazy” (246). And it worked. By 1850, postpartum depression was nationally acknowledged by medical professionals as a disorder
Gilman has stated in multiple papers that the main reason for her writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” was to shed light on her awful experience with this ‘rest cure’. However, she also managed to inject her own feminist agenda into the piece. Charlotte Perkins Gilman chose to include certain subtle, but alarming details regarding the narrator’s life as a representation of how women were treated at the time. She wants us to understand why the narrator ends up being driven to madness, or in her case, freedom. There are untold layers to this truly simple, short story just like there were many layers to Gilman
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," is the disheartening tale of a woman suffering from postpartum depression. Set during the late 1890s, the story shows the mental and emotional results of the typical "rest cure" prescribed during that era and the narrator’s reaction to this course of treatment. It would appear that Gilman was writing about her own anguish as she herself underwent such a treatment with Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell in 1887, just two years after the birth of her daughter Katherine. The rest cure that the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" describes is very close to what Gilman herself experienced; therefore, the story can be read as reflecting the feelings of women like herself who suffered through such treatments. Because of her experience with the rest cure, it can even be said that Gilman based the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" loosely on herself. But I believe that expressing her negative feelings about the popular rest cure is only half of the message that Gilman wanted to send. Within the subtext of this story lies the theme of oppression: the oppression of the rights of women especially inside of marriage. Gilman was using the woman/women behind the wallpaper to express her personal views on this issue.
Throughout the late 1800s Americans were workaholics, constantly working in order to make a living for their families at home. Women stayed home and took care of the house as well as the children. The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” takes place in the late 1800s.The author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman is no stranger to the hysteria that took over women in the 19th century. According to Mary Ellen Snodgrass, after her own postpartum emotional collapse and treatment in 1887, Gilman knew about the situation women were experiencing (“Gilman”). All the pressure of working and raising children affected all Americans, but society blamed the nervous depression mainly on women because they were women. Charlotte Perkins Gilman conveys her own life experience and illness that she went through and how women were treated during the 1800’s.
"The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts a woman in isolation, struggling to cope with mental illness, which has been diagnosed by her husband, a physician. Going beyond this surface level, the reader sees the narrator as a developing feminist, struggling with the societal values of the time. As a woman writer in the late nineteenth century, Gilman herself felt the adverse effects of the male-centric society, and consequently, placed many allusions to her own personal struggles as a feminist in her writing. Throughout the story, the narrator undergoes a psychological journey that correlates with the advancement of her mental condition. The restrictions which society places on her as a woman have a worsening effect on her until illness progresses into hysteria. The narrator makes comments and observations that demonstrate her will to overcome the oppression of the male dominant society. The conflict between her views and those of the society can be seen in the way she interacts physically, mentally, and emotionally with the three most prominent aspects of her life: her husband, John, the yellow wallpaper in her room, and her illness, "temporary nervous depression." In the end, her illness becomes a method of coping with the injustices forced upon her as a woman. As the reader delves into the narrative, a progression can be seen from the normality the narrator displays early in the passage, to the insanity she demonstrates near the conclusion.
In everyday day life we go through changes and sometimes we even break down to the point we do not know what to do with ourselves, but in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story” The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator is an obsessive person. The story focuses on a woman who is going through postpartum depression and has had a nervous breakdown. Her husband John moves her into a home where he wants her to rest in isolation to recover from her disorder. Throughout her time in the room the narrator discovers new things and finally understands life.
Throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells her readers the story of a woman desperate to be free. Gilman’s use of symbolism is nothing short of brilliant in telling the story of a new mother suffering from postpartum depression and fighting her way through societies ideas of what a woman should be. When her husband, John, also known as her physician, tells her nothing is wrong with her mind, at first she believes him because she knows that society tells her she should. However, with her husband’s misdiagnosis, or attempt to keep his wife sane for the sake of their reputation, comes a short journey into madness for his wife, Jane. Jane’s downward spiral, as one may call it, turns out to be not so downward when the reader
Gilman creates a horrific tone that helps explore the idea of freedom and confinement within a certain place. The story is created to follow the situation of the narrator and how slowly she begins to deteriorate psychologically due to the wallpaper. The narrator is never assigned a name, therefore it can be assumed that the story is suppose to serve as a voice for the women who have been in a similar situation and have lost their freedom and say on their own lives. However, the narrator appears to come from a wealthy family with privilege so there cannot be this idea that all women who have been through this form of depression and inequalities have experienced it in the same form. Through the use of imagery, the reader was able to understand and clearly visualize the situation in which the narrator is in and see how she has begun to slowly deteriorate, even though she is finally freed in the end of the story, or at least that is what is assumed. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is indeed a very profound image of what it was like to be a female during the 19th century while emphasizing the themes of freedom and confinement. Even though it illustrates the impact that confinement can have on a person, it restricts the situation to fit only women who had similar social backgrounds as the narrator, which is
Gilman’s narration advocates the slow development into insanity and growing frustration that accompanies it. With each entry the woman writes, it was apparent as to how her mental pain she endured was taking over her mind and behavior as the days passed. “This wallpaper has a kind of sub-pattern in a different shade, a particularly irritating one, for you can only see it in certain lights, and not clearly then. But in the places where it isn’t faded and where the sun is just so—I can see a stra...
Throughout the story, the reader is called to trust the narrator although it is clear she is going crazy, for she is the only telling the story. Gilman is able to develop the theme through this character’s point of view by showing that the narrator has no choice in the world in which she lives-- she must obey the men in her life above all else. If Gilman chose any other perspective, the story would not have been able to portray the woman’s oppression as well, because the reader would not have been able to see into her mind as it slipped away well into insanity.
In Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the author takes the reader through the terrors of a woman’s psychosis. The story convey to understatements pertaining to feminism and individuality that at the time was only idealized. Gillman illustrates her chronological descent into insanity. The narrators husband John, who is also her physician diagnosed her with “nervous depression” and therefore ordered her to isolate until she recuperates. She is not only deprived of outside contact but also of her passion to write, since it could deteriorate her condition. The central conflict of the story is person versus society; the healthy part of her, in touch with herself clashing with her internalized thoughts of her society’s expectations. In a feminist point of view the central idea pertains to the social confinement that woman undergo due to their society.