Treatment of Madness in The Bell Jar and The Yellow Wallpaper
Mental illness and madness is a theme often explored in literature and the range of texts exploring these is tremendously varied. Various factors can threaten a character's sanity, ranging from traumatic events which trigger a decline to pressure from more vast, impersonal sources. Generally speaking, writers have tried to show that most threats to sanity comprise a combination of long-term and short-term factors - the burning of the library in Mervyn Peake's novel 'Titus Groan' precipitated Lord Sepulchrave's descent into madness, but a longer term problem can be discerned in the weight of tradition which caused him to worry 'that with him the line of Groan should perish'. Such interplay between the acute and the chronic is, it would seem, a matter of agreement between authors who explored this issue. The manner in which characters respond to these threats is not. In some works the threatened character succeeds in becoming empowered - they find a way to maintain themselves and emerge from the ordeal undefeated, if not unbowed. Esther Greenwood as portrayed in Sylvia Plath's autobiographical novel 'The Bell Jar' is one such character, although the question always remains whether such a victory is a permanent solution. In many other works the only option for the characters is escape. This may be an escape from reality as described in Roald Dahl's short story 'Georgy Porgy'. It may be an escape from self-awareness as shown in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's novella 'The Yellow Wallpaper'. The ultimate escape is self-destruction - Sepulchrave's death in 'Titus Groan' and Sylvia Plath's real-life suicide in 1963 (barely three weeks after 'The Bell Jar' was published) ca...
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...emonstrates throughout the first half of the novel that Greenwood is increasingly withdrawing from herself, with her failure to identify with her reflection in a mirror ("The face in the mirror looked like a sick Indian" - she uses no words to suggest that "the face in the mirror" is herself, and it is only from context that the reader knows this at all) being symbolic of this. The first half of the Bell Jar, then, demonstrates that Esther Greenwood's initial responses to the pressures threatening her sanity are firstly to lose her emotional link to the world, and secondly to lose this link within herself. Such a response only lead to further problems which the author explores in the rest of the novel, and it is a point worth noting that in many cases the defences that can be useful at first in response to a threat can end up as part of the problem itself.
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is the story of a woman spiralling into madness whilst her physician husband refuses to acknowledge that she has a "real" problem. On the other hand The Black Cat by Edgar Alan Poe is about a man who is initially fond of cats however as the plot progresses he becomes an alcoholic making him moody and violent, which lead him to torture and kills the animals and eventually also his wife. In Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Black Cat," symbolism is used to show the narrator’s capacity for violence, madness, and guilt .The recurring theme present in both these stories is that the main protagonists claim that they suffer or have been taken over by a form of madness. In this essay I shall examine the various symbolism used by the writer's to represent madness.
Schizophrenia in The Yellow Wallpaper. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s "The Yellow Wall-Paper," does more than just tell the story of a woman who suffers at the hands of 19th century quack medicine. Gilman created a protagonist with real emotions and a real psych that can be examined and analyzed in the context of modern psychology. In fact, understanding the psychology of the unnamed protagonist is well on the way to understanding the story itself. " The Yellow Wall-Paper," written in first-person narrative, charts the psychological state of the protagonist as she slowly deteriorates into schizophrenia (a disintegration of the personality).
There are various interpretations of what causes the narrator to go crazy in the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. These interpretations include suggestions that the narrator is possessed, that she is oppressed by society and is acting out, that she has suffered from a traumatic childbirth, and so on. While all of these ideas hold merit and are supported by evidence in the short story, there is an alternative explanation that fits the story just as well, if not better. That explanation is that the reason the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” acts strangely and sees images in the wallpaper of her room is that she is suffering from the disorder of postpartum psychosis. During this essay I will be going into depth on a psychological analysis of “The Yellow Wallpaper”.
The process of mitosis can take place in either a haploid (23 chromosomes) or a diploid (46 chromosomes) cell. Before a cell can be ready for a mitotic division it must primarily undergo its interphase stage. Following the interphase stage several other stages come into play. These stages are prophase, prometaphase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase. During each specific stage certain sequences of events take place that assist to the completion of the division.
Sylvia Plath’s novel, “The Bell Jar”, tells a story of a young woman’s descent into mental illness. Esther Greenwood, a 19 year old girl, struggles to find meaning within her life as she sees a distorted version of the world. In Plath’s novel, different elements and themes of symbolism are used to explain the mental downfall of the book’s main character and narrator such as cutting her off from others, forcing her to delve further into her own mind, and casting an air of negativity around her. Plath uses images of rotting fig trees and veils of mist to convey the desperation she feels when confronted with issues of her future. Esther Greenwood feels that she is trapped under a bell jar, which distorts her view of the world around her.
Promissory estoppel is when a person makes a promise to somebody and they end up back out of the promise.
A smart move made by Castro was to drastically improve education in Cuba. Education up through university was free to everyone, so it was not surprising that within a decade, the amount of teachers tripled, the number of schools quintupled, and illiteracy appeared to vanish. (Charlip) In fact, Cuba became the most literate country in Latin America. Moreover, Cuba also had the highest book production in all of Latin America. (Charlip) Improved education in Cuba was undoubtedly a success.
In the Prophase, chromosome as double threads joined at centromere and then shorten and thicken. Then nucleolus and nuclear membrane disappears. Fibrils of astral rays extend across forming mitotic spindle. After that centriole divides into two.
Cell division is extremely important; cells must divide in order to maintain an efficient volume to surface area ratio, allow organisms to grow and develop, and repair any damaged tissue. Cells are able to do all this through two processes: meiosis and mitosis. Without these processes, humans would not be able to do many of the basic functions we are so accustomed to, including growing, healing even the smallest cuts, and even reproducing! However, meiosis and mitosis, although both procedures for cell division, are very different.
The Yellow Wallpaper as a Guide To Insanity "There comes John, and I must put this away- he hates to have me write a word" (p659). As evident by the above quote, Gilman places the narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" as secluded as she could be; she is placed in a large house, surrounded only by her husband and by little help (Jennie), when it is unfortunately clear that her relationship with her husband is based on distance and misunderstanding: "It is so hard to talk with John about my case, because he is so wise, and because he loves me so"(p 663). Gilman further confines her narrator as it becomes clear that the poor soul has absolutely no one to talk to; that is, no one who can understand her. The narrator is cornered by her loved ones, she is isolated from the world under her husband-doctor orders, she is thus physically confined to her shaky mental realm. The next aspect of the narrator that zooms us into her state is her tone: "I really have discovered something at last..
The creation of a stressful psychological state of mind is prevalent in the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as well as, Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Ophelia’s struggles in William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, and the self-inflicted sickness seen in William Blake’s “Mad Song”. All the characters, in these stories and poems, are subjected to external forces that plant the seed of irrationality into their minds; thus, creating an adverse intellectual reaction, that from an outsider’s point of view, could be misconstrued as being in an altered state due to the introduction of a drug, prescribed or otherwise, furthering the percep...
Life is full of endless amounts of beautiful encounters for every character in the novel The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, except for Esther. She suffers from a severe and complex mental illness that impacts her life greatly. Although it is clear that Esther suffers strongly from depression in the novel, Sylvia Plath chooses to tell her life abstractly through countless symbols and ironies to prove that Esther depression completely consumes her. Everything that Esther sees is through a lens of depression, which scews her outlook on life.
The process of meiosis is different from many other forms of cell division. In meiosis the daughter cells only have half the number of chromosomes of the parent. What that means is that the cells produced in meiosis are not exact copies of the original cell. Meiosis is fragmented down into many stages. Every cell in the course of meiosis includes the cell growing, dividing, and spitting, and dividing again in order to create the four cells as the end product.
One’s identity is the most important lesson to be learned. It is vital part of life knowing who you are in order to live a fulfilled life. Without knowing your identity, and the way you perceive life, it is difficult for others to understand you, along with a struggle to live a happy life. In Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar,” Esther Greenwood struggles to find her own identity, and in the process, she develops a mental illness which helps her discover the person she is on the inside.
After cleaning, apply a thin layer of the antibiotic ointment recommended by your health care provider. This will help prevent infection and keep the dressing from sticking.