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A Feminist Study on “the Yellow Wallpaper” “The Yellow Wallpaper” is one of the representative works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who was a prominent ...
How women were portrayed in early american literature
A Feminist Study on “the Yellow Wallpaper” “The Yellow Wallpaper” is one of the representative works of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, who was a prominent ...
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“The Yellow Wallpaper”, written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells the tale of a woman succumbing to madness following postpartum depression. First published in 1892, it stands out as a piece of early American feminist literature and it reflects 19th century society’s attitude towards women’s health -- both physical and mental. In the beginning of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator and her husband take vacation to the countryside to give the narrator some time to rest and recover. As the story progresses, the narrator becomes more and more bothered by the wallpaper in the room in which she is staying. At the end, the narrator finally loses it and her husband faints upon seeing how insane she has become. The narrator, referred to as Jane, has been suffering from what her husband, who is a physician, believes is a “temporary nervous depression.” He prescribes a “rest cure” …show more content…
She becomes too weak to write and devotes all of her time to studying the wallpaper. She begins to see shapes in the wallpaper -- to start off with, it looks to her as it is filled with “absurd, unblinking eyes.” The more she examines the wallpaper, the more she sees. She sees a pattern within the initial pattern -- something she describes as “a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure.” She feels as though her condition has not improved and her husband states that he will send her to Weir Mitchell, a well renowned physician, but Jane does not want this. Her mental state starts to decline and she becomes more emotional, crying at almost anything and her obsession with the wallpaper grows, with her becoming determined to find the purpose of the wallpaper’s pattern. The “strange, provoking, formless sort of figure” she initially sees begins to take the shape of a woman, whom she believes is trapped inside the wallpaper. At night when she’s watching this “woman”, she sees her struggling to free herself from the
The stories “Shouldn't I Feel Pretty?” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” feature a dynamic protagonist who undergoes a character development which reveals the consequences of oppression caused by societal standards. Gilman crafted the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” with the purpose of exposing the tyrannical role of gender roles to women. In the story, the narrator suffers a slight postpartum depression in the beginning, but her condition gets progressively worse because her husband John believes “that there is nothing the matter with [her] but temporary nervous depression-- a slight hysterical tendency” (331). He concludes that the best treatment for his wife is for her to be “absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until [she is] well again” (332).
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
Perkins stated that she wrote the story after a period of being interred for mental illness, and that she was only able to recover from this illness after having ignored her doctor's advice: “Using the remnants of intelligence that remained, and helped by a wise friend, I cast the noted specialist's advice to the winds and went to work again…ultimately recovering some measure of power.” (Perkins, 2009. 300) From the start of the story, Perkins describes an uneven relationship between her narrator and her husband. The latter is a person of standing and has a respectable social position. He is therefore put in a position of authority. This is made clear in the lines: “ You see he does not believe I am sick!...If a physician of high standing...assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression -- a slight hysterical tendency -- what is one to do?” (Perkins, 2013. 76) From the start of the story, Perkins puts her narrator in a position in which she is surrounded by male authority figures who deny...
Ever since she has been entrapped in her room, the narrator’s vivid imagination has crafted fictional explanations for the presence of inconsistencies in the wallpaper. She explains them by saying “The front pattern does move! And no wonder! The woman behind shakes it” (Gilman 9). In the story, the narrator explains the woman mentioned creeps in and about the old house she and her husband reside in. Venturing towards the conclusion, the narrator becomes hysterical when thinking about the wallpaper, explaining to her husband’s sister Jennie how she would very much like to tear the wallpaper down. Jennie offers to do it herself, but the narrator is persistent in her desire-”But I am here, and nobody touches that paper but me-not ALIVE”(Gilman 10)! The narrator has realized the apex of her mental instability as the story
As man developed more complex social systems, society placed more emphasis of childbearing. Over time, motherhood was raised to the status of “saintly”. This was certainly true in western cultures during the late 19th/early 20th century. Charlotte Perkins Gilman did not agree with the image of motherhood that society proposed to its members at the time. “Arguably ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ reveals women’s frustration in a culture that seemingly glorifies motherhood while it actually relegates women to nursery-prisons” (Bauer 65). Among the many other social commentaries contained within this story, is the symbolic use of the nursery as a prison for the main character.
The “Yellow Wall Paper “ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a chilling study and experiment of mental disorder in nineteenth century. This is a story of a miserable wife, a young woman in anguish, stress surrounding her in the walls of her bedroom and under the control of her husband doctor, who had given her the treatment of isolation and rest. This short story vividly reflects both a woman in torment and oppression as well as a woman struggling for self expression.
Back in the 19th and early 20th centuries, not much was known about how to treat mental illnesses. At the time, many doctors felt that an appropriate way to handle such a thing was something known as the “resting cure,” which called for doing little more than “resting” by oneself. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s epistolary short story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the main speaker writes of her reclusive treatment for her own mental illness. Throughout the passage, Gilman criticizes the practice of the resting cure by showing the harmful effects of isolation and the reduction of a person to an infantile state.
...rld. Throughout the story, the wallpaper becomes an outlet for the narrator to exercise her literary imagination. She soon comes to find that the wallpaper holds a feminine figure, or so she thinks. By using her initial feeling of being watched, the narrator decodes the chaotic pattern and locates the figure of a woman. A woman struggling to break free from the bars in the pattern. As her insanity increases, the narrator completely relates with this woman. She then begins to believe that she, too, is trapped within the wallpaper. When she tears down the wallpaper, she believes that she has finally broken out of the wallpaper. The wallpaper that she believes John has imprisoned her. By tearing it down, the narrator asserts her own identity, which unfortunately by now is confused. As she crawls around the room, she is initiating the first stage of a feminist uprising.
“The Yellow Wallpaper:” a Symbol for Women As the narrator presents a dangerous and startling view into the world of depression, Charlotte Perkins Gilman introduces a completely revitalized way of storytelling using the classic elements of fiction. Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” combines a multitude of story elements that cannot be replicated. Her vast use of adjectives and horrifying descriptions of the wallpaper bring together a story that is both frightening and intensely well told. Using the story’s few characters and remote setting, Charlotte Perkins Gilman presents the wallpaper as both a representation of the narrator and the story’s theme, as well as a symbol for her descent into the abyss of insanity. As the story opens, the suspiciously unnamed narrator and her husband, John, temporarily move into a new home (226).
As she spends more and more time isolated in her bedroom, with nothing else to occupy her mind, she gradually become fixated on the dreadful patterns of the paper and instantly foresee something else: the narrator eventually see a “strange, provoking, formless sort of figure, that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous design”(77). The narrator’s bedroom being a prison becomes more literal as from figurative when the loneliness and social negation intensifies her need for an escape from the pre-set nature of conduct created specifically for her (a mentally depressed and unwell women) by the people in her life especially by John. Throughout the story, the narrator’s psychological breakdown goes from a typical depressed mind and lacked awareness of identity, to a complete madness and reversed sense of self-esteem. She gradually changes the place she has in the physical world and fights back the social rejection she is facing by turning away from reality in exchange for a world where she has total control and can act according to her own will. The author uses the yellow wallpaper as a symbol for representing the phases of the narrator’s gradual deteriorating
As she studies the incoherent pattern in the wallpaper she becomes determined to make sense of it and begins to see a pattern “like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (219), and begins to distinguish a woman creeping secretively behind the pattern. Here, through symbolism, Gilman is able to portray the wallpaper pattern as a metaphoric prison, and the protagonist’s mind as this new mysterious figure in the pattern, trapped and having to covertly move around. Although the protagonist studies the pattern in the wallpaper, it never makes any sense to her and likewise, no matter how hard she tries to recover, the terms established by John for her recovery never make any sense to her, either. Further, the protagonist view’s John’s sister, Jennie, more as a prison guard than a beloved in-law, so when she hears Jennie coming up the stairs to check on her, she quickly puts away her writing and adopts a more restful position in order to not alert them to what she is
Setting is a critical part of any story, developing both the time and place in which the story takes place, as well as mood and tone of the text. This certainly takes no exception in Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Not only does the setting in “The Yellow Wallpaper” achieve the above, but also it goes one level deeper by giving the reader insight into the narrator’s mindset. By utilizing the setting as described by the narrator, along with the knowledge of the narrator’s battle with hysteria, the reader can fully interpret the setting, its impact on the narrator, as well as determine Gilman’s implications throughout the story.
Because her husband, John, does not take her illness seriously and neglects to get her out of the house, her mind cannot take it and she loses her sanity. It should be clear to the reader, since she thinks she and the imaginary woman has worked together to pull the wallpaper down that she believes the women in the yellow wallpaper and she are both trapped and are both working together to escape. (200) Likewise, when she tells John, “I got out at last”, and, “in spite of you and jane! And I pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back”, By her saying this to John tells you she thinks she is free, because she has torn down the yellow wallpaper. She is no longer saying anything about a woman being in the wallpaper, because in her mind, she is now the
“The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins-Gilman explores the oppression of women in the nineteenth century and the constant limitation of their freedom, which many times led to their confinement. The short story illustrates male superiority and the restriction of a woman’s choice regarding her own life. The author’s diction created a horrific and creepy tone to illustrate the supernatural elements that serve as metaphors to disguise the true meaning of the story. Through the use of imagery, the reader can see that the narrator is living within a social class, so even though the author is trying to create a universal voice for all women that have been similar situations, it is not possible. This is not possible because there are many
The Yellow Wallpaper is a very astonishing story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman that daringly reaches out to explore the mental state of a woman whose mind eventually begins to be broken down to a state of insanity by the appearance of a creeping woman who is trapped behind a revolting yellow wallpaper. This short story takes a look at the causes of the narrator’s insanity by how she was confined in a house alone, trapped with only her mind and a dull wallpaper; while dealing with depression and consuming strong