Importance of Setting and Wallpaper in The Yellow Wallpaper

1463 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Importance of setting in literature

Importance of Setting and Wallpaper in The Yellow Wallpaper

The Room itself represents the author’s unconscious protective cell that has encased her mind, represented by the woman, for a very long time. This cell is slowly deteriorating and losing control of her thoughts. I believe that this room is set up as a self-defense mechanism when the author herself is put into the asylum. She sets this false wall up to protect her from actually becoming insane and the longer she is in there the more the wall paper begins to deteriorate. This finally leads to her defense weakening until she is left with just madness and insanity. All of the characters throughout the story represent real life people with altered roles in her mind. While she is in the mental institute she blends reality with her subconscious, forming this story from events that are happening all around here in the real world.

As the reader is introduced to the woman we find her talking about very strange and unusual happenings occurring around her. She evens states that she has a condition that signifies insanity, but the doctor would never tell her straight to her face that she was insane. She says, “I think it is due to this nervous condition”(453). This shows that she knows there is something wrong with her. This nervous condition she refers to can only mean that she is having mental problems and is possibly going insane. We can infer this because during this time period, the doctors did not state that someone was insane because they had no medical proof. Instead they would just tell the patients that they have a nervous condition, and send them away. She says, “I always fancy I see people walking in the numerous paths and arbors, but...

... middle of paper ...

...f the bad that is going on in her real life, so she would have a happy place to live. With the collapse of her happy place her defense was gone and she had no protection from her insanity anymore. This caused all of her blocked out thoughts to swarm her mind and turn her completely insane. When the doctor found her, he tried to go in and help her. When the doctor finally got in he fainted because he had made so many positive changes with her and was utterly distressed when he found out that it was all for naught. This woman had made a safety net within her mind so that she would not have to deal with the reality of being in an insane asylum, but in the end everything failed and it seems that what she had been protecting herself from finally conquered her. She was then forced to succumb to her breakdown and realize that she was in the insane asylum for the long run.

Show More
Related

  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B Anthony

    392 Words  | 1 Pages

    Susan B. Anthony is the most well known name in women's rights from the 1800s. Most people who are not familiar with the history of this time are aware of Susan's reputation and nearly everyone of my generation has seen and held a Susan B. Anthony silver dollar. For these reasons I was greatly surprised to learn that Elizabeth Cady Stanton was the original women's rights movement spokeswoman and Susan B. Anthony her protégé.

    Read More

  • Summary Of Susan B. Anthony

    2088 Words  | 5 Pages

    Today, women and men have equal rights, however not long ago men believed women were lower than them. During the late eighteenth century, men expected women to stay at home and raise children. Women were given very few opportunities to expand their education past high school because colleges and universities would not accept females. This was a loss for women everywhere because it took away positions of power for them. It was even frowned upon if a woman showed interest in medicine or law because that was a man 's place not a woman’s, just like it was a man 's duty to vote and not a woman 's. The road to women 's right was long and hard, but many women helped push the right to vote, the one that was at the front of that group was Susan B. Anthony.

    Read More

  • Biography of Susan B. Anthony

    1468 Words  | 3 Pages

    Susan Brownell Anthony, being an abolitionist, educational reformer, labor activist, and organizer for woman suffrage, used her intellectual and confident mind to fight for parity. Anthony fought for women through campaigning for women’s rights as well as a suffragist for many around the nation. She had focused her attention on the need for women to reform law in their own interests, both to improve their conditions and to challenge the "maleness" of current law. Susan B. Anthony helped the abolitionists and fought for women’s rights to change the United States with her Quaker values and strong beliefs in equality.

    Read More

  • Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the Movement of the 19th Amendment

    556 Words  | 2 Pages

    Elizabeth Cady Stanton who is one of the famous women in the movement was born in 1815 in Johnstown, New York. She received her formal education in her college and an informal legal education by her father. On her honeymoon in London, she and Lucretia Mott were angry at the exclusion of the woman. And then they decided to call a woman’s right convention. And for the next 50 years, she played a leadership in Suffrage movement, which is getting the movement to get the right to vote. She wrote “The Declaration of Sentiments.” It was calling for changes in law and society like educational, legal, political, social and economic. She elevated women's status, and demanded the right to vote. In 1851, she met Susan B. Anthony. She is also the woman who was active for a woman right to vote. They were fantastically influential in the 19th Amendment.

    Read More

  • Accomplishments: Susan B. Anthony's Accomplishments

    999 Words  | 2 Pages

    By this time only four states had women's suffrage. These states are Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Idaho (UXL Biographies). Because she died, women carried her legacy by getting the Nineteenth Amendment passed on August 20, 1920 (Shenkman). In 1979 and 1980, the government made one dollar coins with a picture of Anthony on it. It was the very first coin to have a picture of a woman (Sochen). Because of all the hard work Anthony did and people telling her that women shouldn’t be equal to men she didn’t give up. She pushed through all the tough times, and because she did that she was able to accomplish her goal. Twenty-six million women were able to vote because of her. No one could ignore women anymore or their problems. They are now treated like everyone else. What she did, didn’t just get women the right to vote. It changed women’s everyday life too. The women got better pay and the place where they worked was safer. The children’s well being was changed too (The Nineteenth

    Read More

  • Susan B Anthony Research Paper

    685 Words  | 2 Pages

    After teaching for 15 year, she became active in temperance. However, because she was a women she was not allowed to speak at rallies. Soon after meeting Elizabeth Cady Stanton she became very active in the women’s right movement in 1852 and dedicated her life to woman suffrage.

    Read More

  • Susan B. Anthony

    1157 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...re and an American hero she devoted her life to working towards equal rights for all women.  Through writing, speaking, and campaigning, Anthony and her supporters brought about change in the United States government and gave women the important voice that they had always been denied.  Any study of feminism or women’s history would be incomplete without learning about her.  She fought for her beliefs for 50 years and led the way for women to be granted rights as citizens of their country, Thanks to Anthony’s persistence, several years after her death, in 1920 women were given the right by the Nineteenth Amendment of the Constitution. I do believe she was the key figure in women getting the right to vote. “She will forever stand alone and unapproached, her fame continually increasing as evolution lifts humanity into higher appreciation of justice and liberty.”

    Read More

  • Annotated Bibliography Of Susan B Anthony

    1647 Words  | 4 Pages

    Susan B. Anthony was a prominent women’s rights activist and a social reformer. She dedicated her life to spread awareness of the danger and unfairness of social inequalities and slavery. She helped creating or advocating many US and International organizations. She lobbied the creation of laws to protect the rights of citizens regardless of their ethnicity or gender. She was "one of the most loved and hated women in the country. "Her opponents often described her as "nsexed, an unnatural creature that did not function as a true woman, one who devoted her life to a husband” (Barry). She passed away

    Read More

  • Surviving The Last Plantation

    1134 Words  | 3 Pages

    They find meaning in their lives.Before purpose and survival or redemption and salvation can be discussed, an idea of what Angola is must be produced. The warden of Angola is a large man by the name of Burl Cain. Some believe that he is the reason for Angola being what it is. Bergner believes different:The striking tranquility at Angola—confirmed by the ACLU’s National Prison Project and Louisiana’s own watchdogs—could not be credited to Warden Cain alone. Twenty-one years ago conditions had been so anarchic and murderous a federal judge had ruled that the prison "shocked the conscience" and breached the Eight Amendment’s guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment. Reform had begun then.

    Read More

  • The Yellow Wallpaper- Insanity Preventions

    562 Words  | 2 Pages

    There is no one to listen to her or care for her ‘personal’ opinions. Her husband cares for her, in a doctor’s fashion, but her doesn’t listen to her (Rao, 39). Dealing with a mentally ill patient can be difficult, however, it’s extremely inappropriate for her husband to be her doctor when he has a much larger job to fulfill. He solely treats his wife as a patient telling her only what could benefit her mental sickness rather than providing her with the companionship and support she desperately needs. If her husband would have communicated with her on a personal level, her insanity episode could have been prevented. Instead of telling her everything she needed he should’ve been there to listen and hear her out. Instead she had to seek an alternate audience, being her journal in which he then forbids her to do. All of this leads to the woman having nobody to speak or express emotion to. All of her deep and insane thoughts now fluttered through her head like bats in the Crystal Cave.

    Read More

  • Women's Suffrage in American History

    680 Words  | 2 Pages

    Lucy Stone, an abolitionist, is one of the most important workers for women's suffrage and women's rights. When the Bible was quoted to her, defending the positions of men and women, she declared that when she grew up, she'd learn Greek and Hebrew so she could correct the mistranslation that she was sure was behind these verses (Lewis) Doing so she showed the translations were unfair to women. Because her father couldn’t support her education, she saved her own money to go to college and was the first woman in Massachusetts to graduate, proving to women they have the ability to have equal education as men. Right after being first woman to graduate, she was the first to give her public speech in Congregational Church, not having yet her rights, and is now recognized as an honorable speaker. Lucy Stone portrays female dominance by going against the law to earn women's rights. Lucy was hired at AERA, but her speech in 1850 converted Susan B. Anthony to the suffrage cause, later split with Anthony over strategy and tactics, splitting the suffrage movement into two major branches. She continued to be an editor for the Woman's Journal. Lucy Stone's radical move to keep her own name continued to inspire, she is still remembered, today, as the first woman to keep her own name after marriage.

    Read More

  • Susan B Anthony's Life and Accomplishments

    1269 Words  | 3 Pages

    Achieving equality between men and women was a long and arduous task. In the 19th century, an organized women’s rights movement began in the United States. Perhaps its most famous leader was Susan B. Anthony, a champion of women’s rights until her death in 1906. Susan B. Anthony’s work established and inspired the institution of many women’s rights, and she remains one of the most influential women in history.

    Read More

  • The History Of The Women's Rights Movement

    1394 Words  | 3 Pages

    “The history of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality,” this was stated by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a very crucial women’s suffragist. Over time, women’s history has evolved due to the fact that women were pushing for equal rights. Women were treated as less than men. They had little to no rights. The Women’s Rights Movement in the 1800’s lead up to the change in women’s rights today. This movement began in 1848 with the Seneca Falls Convention. For the next 72 years, women continually fought for equal rights. In 1920, they gained the right to vote which ended the movement and opened the opportunity for more change in women’s lives. Because of the Women’s Rights Movement, women today are able to vote, receive

    Read More

  • Susan B Anthony Heroine

    776 Words  | 2 Pages

    Who was Susan Brownell Anthony? More importantly, who was she as a person? What would it be like to be her, nearly 200 years ago, in Northwestern New York? She is normally thought of as a suffragette, or the woman who dared to vote. But that’s not all she did. Susan B. Anthony fought for civil rights, women’s rights, and human rights in general. She was a humble and selfless soul, and a famed suffragette and abolitionist. She is a hero to us as Americans, because she fought for rights we might not have if she had done otherwise.

    Read More

  • The Social Value of 19th Amendment

    917 Words  | 2 Pages

    During America's early history, women were denied some of the rights to well-being by men. For example, married women couldn't own property and had no legal claim to any money that they might earn, and women hadn't the right to vote. They were expected to focus on housework and motherhood, and didn't have to join politics. On the contrary, they didn't have to be interested in them. Then, in order to ratify this amendment they were prompted to a long and hard fight; victory took decades of agitation and protest. Beginning in the 19th century, some generations of women's suffrage supporters lobbied to achieve what a lot of Americans needed: a radical change of the Constitution. The movement for women's rights began to organize after 1848 at the national level. In July of that year, reformers Elizabeth Cady Stanton(1815-1902) and Lucretia Mott (1793-1880), along with Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906) and other activists organized the first convention for women's rights at Seneca Falls, New York. More than 300 people, mostly women but also some men, attended it. Then, they raised public awar...

    Read More

More about Importance of Setting and Wallpaper in The Yellow Wallpaper

Open Document