In Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the protagonist, Jane, gives an account of her current depression-stricken state that seems to be misunderstood by those close to her. The story is written in a journal-like style from a first person point of view. Jane, suffering from a sort of illness—which she believes others have belittled to nervous depression—has been given strict orders to do nothing in an attempt to cure her sickness. Although her physician husband, John, seems to take care of her by providing a stay at a summer vacation home, she begins to resent him and sees him as imprisoning. She hides her thoughts from him and uses a secret journal as an escape to express her true feelings. At first, Jane hates the yellow wallpaper in her room; but after spending many hours in isolation there, the yellow wallpaper begins to fascinate Jane. Soon, it dominates her thinking and she becomes unusually obsessed with it, identifying with the woman in the wallpaper who seems to be trapped. Eventually, Jane becomes extremely crazy and although she wants to gain freedom, the story ends with her being trapped more than ever by her own crazed state of mind. Throughout the story, the author incorporates literary elements such as irony, imagery, and symbolism to help the reader understand and identify with Jane.
Irony is woven throughout the entire story. Gillman chooses to incorporate situational, dramatic, and verbal irony to give the story a twist and engage the reader. Situational irony is seen in the fact that although her husband is a doctor, his treatment does her more harm than good. Many would assume that a doctor’s prescribed treatment should cure the patient; John, her husband even says, “Can you not trust me as a ph...
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...e reader sympathizes with her and understands that if only someone would have listened to her she might have been set free. At the end of the story, the take home message is simply a feminist one—that a woman should have the right to speak for herself and give input about her own life. What if Jane had not been prescribed the “rest-cure” treatment? Might she have lived a life, happily ever after? The author leaves this question for the reader to contemplate and ponder. This sort of questioning is effective in that it proposes the idea to a woman that maybe she does deserve more rights and especially control of her own life. Gillman is a wonderful writer who set out with the purpose of writing a story that served as a warning, yet did so in such a clever, intriguing and twisted way through the use of many literary devices which included irony, imagery and symbolism.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman recounts, by means of Jane’s journal, the story of Jane and her husband John, following the birth of their baby. Like Gilman, Jane suffers from post-partum depression, and, her husband, who is a physician, locks her in the nursery on the top floor of their summer home. After the first few weeks of her summer in isolation, Jane hides her journal, which contains her true thoughts, so that John will be unaware of...
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
From an early age Jane is aware she is at a disadvantage, yet she learns how to break free from her entrapment by following her heart. Jane appears as not only the main character in the text, but also a female narrator. Being a female narrator suggests a strong independent woman, but Jane does not seem quite that.
The Yellow Wallpaper is a popular book when discussing psychology in the late nineteenth century. The author, Charlotte Gilman, wrote her experience of mental illness through her narrator. Gilman suffered with depression after giving birth and she never fully recovered from it. (Gilman 95). The narrator is depicted as a woman who has been diagnosed with what was called a nervous disorder. Her husband, a psychologist, gave her several different tonics and other substances that are supposed to make her better. She was also put on bed rest meaning that she was not able to work or do anything that would tire her out. She is told to go and rest several times during the story and it is evident that her ‘psychosis’ gets worse when she is forced to stay in her room and rest for the majority of her days and all night. She begins to see women in the pattern of her wallpaper and she becomes obsessed with it. The narrator becomes very protective of her wallpaper and gets almost jealous when she sees her sister-in-law looking at it and touching it. She even says “no person touches this pa...
In the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses the protagonist, whose name is most likely Jane, to share the pivotal summer of her life. Her husband, John, takes her to spend the summer in the country, thinking that keeping her in a quiet, isolated space with windows would be best for her to rest and regain her energy. As the story continues, the reader develops a clear understanding that John’s hopes are not the case. Gilman’s way of drawing the reader into a seemingly normal woman’s life is a very effective technique that reflects insight and understanding into the process of mental deterioration.
In the short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, written by Charlotte Perkins Stenson, the author uses irony, symbolism and point of view to exemplify the effects depression has on people. This demonstrates how depression masks itself as mixed feelings under a cloud of denial until it appears once again suddenly and uncontrollably. Sadly, this allows the illness to affect the main character both physically and mentally. She is forced to believe that something in wrong with her and is told by her own husband that she is suffering from a deadly disease. Her husband John is manipulative and controlling and refuses to let her talk. She very dearly wishes to speak, but loves her husband and respects his word. Her inability to find her voice eats away at her and leaves her feeling sad and unwanted because she has no one to listen to what she wants to say. This essay will discuss how the author uses the figurative devices listed above to give the
In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, through expressive word choice and descriptions, allows the reader to grasp the concepts she portrays and understand the way her unnamed narrator feels as the character draws herself nearer and nearer to insanity. “The Yellow Wallpaper” begins with the narrator writing in a journal about the summer home she and her husband have rented while their home is being remodeled. In the second entry, she mentions their bedroom which contains the horrendous yellow wallpaper. After this, not one day goes by when she doesn’t write about the wallpaper. She talks about the twisting, never-ending pattern; the heads she can see hanging upside-down as if strangled by it; and most importantly the
The short story titled, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is given its name for no other reason than the disturbing yellow wallpaper that the narrator comes to hate so much; it also plays as a significant symbol in the story. The wallpaper itself can represent many various ideas and circumstances, and among them, the sense of feeling trapped, the impulse of creativity gone awry, and what was supposed to be a simple distraction transfigures into an unhealthy obsession. By examining the continuous references to the yellow wallpaper itself, one can begin to notice how their frequency develops the plot throughout the course of the story. As well as giving the reader an understanding as to why the wallpaper is a more adequate and appropriate symbol to represent the lady’s confinement and the deterioration of her mental and emotional health. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the color of the wallpaper symbolizes the internal and external conflicts of the narrator that reflect the expectations and treatment of the narrator, as well as represent the sense of being controlled in addition to the feeling of being trapped.
"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.
In conclusion, Jane has been through oppression and depression but she stands up for what she believes in. Jane gains her femininity, socialization, individuality and freedom. Her husband, who has been oppressing her for so many years, is no longer her prison guard. Jane defies her husband, creeps right over him and claims her life” so, that I had to creep over him every time” (Gilman 1609). Jane is now her own personal freedom through perseverance.
Although both protagonists in the stories go through a psychological disorder that turns their lives upside down, they find ways to feel content once again. In Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," a nervous wife, an overprotective husband, and a large, damp room covered in musty wallpaper all play important roles in driving the wife insane. Gilman's masterful use of not only the setting, both time and place, but also of first person point of view, allows the reader to process the woman's growing insanity. The narrator develops a very intimate relationship with the yellow wallpaper throughout the story, as it is her constant companion. Her initial reaction to it is a feeling of hatred; she dislikes the color and despises the pattern, but does not attribute anything peculiar to it. Two weeks into their stay she begins to project a sort of personality onto the paper, so she studies the pattern more closely, noticing for the first time “a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design” (Gilman). At this point, her madness is vague, but becoming more defined, because although the figure that she sees behind the pattern has no solid shape, she dwells on it and
From “Literature: The Human Experience” written by Abcarian and Klotz, “Irony is figurative language in which the intended meaning differs from the literal meaning” (1615). There is more than one level of irony at work in this story. Dramatic irony occurs when a reader or audience know things a character does not and, consequently, sees things differently (Abcarian & Klotz 1615). Gilman uses dramatic irony when the narrator states, “I’m feeling so much better” (Gilman 1005) as if the narrator believe that she is normal, but when she states “I think that woman gets out in the daytime! And I’ll tell you why-privately- I’ve seen her!” (Gilman 1006), the reader knows that she is actually going in sane. It is dramatic irony because the reader‘s understanding of the narrator’s speeches is different markedly from the narrator’s. Through this dramatic irony, Gilman has let the reader knows how complete seclusion can only add to the desolation and push people to the verge of insanity. The order of “rest cure” treatment may symbolize her husband’s love towards her, but ironically it makes her condition worse. This plot symbolizes how women were oppressed and dominated by their husbands and they had no place for self expression.
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.
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