Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper

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One may say that a woman’s work is never done. Many American women grow up with this embedded in their minds and feel it to be true Charlotte Perkins Gilman, published in 1892 in the New England Magazine, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” vividly describes how she got to the point of mental ruin. Gilman successfully built her narratives in the short story, which was essentially intended to be a letter to the doctor that diagnosed her, by employing emotional appeals and emphasizing the recurring theme of madness.
An important aspect to understanding the mental state of the woman is to truly understand how strongly she felt about the yellow wallpaper covering the inside the room. The title of the short story is named “The Yellow Wallpaper,” coming off …show more content…

This home symbolizes the deterioration of her mind and soul. Omar Mukhtar, an esteemed physician published in the British Medical Journal for an analysis of the narrator, “Forced to retire for the summer to a colonial mansion the narrator finds herself confined to an upstairs room, which has previously served as a nursery. Forbidden from working with her husband, denied access to the rest of the house, and reduced to hiding her journal entries from him, what begins as a "temporary nervous depression" rapidly becomes a florid psychosis.” (Mukhtar, 285) As she got locked out of more and more of the house, she lost track of reality and slipped into full throttle psychosis. The walls represent her limits and what she is bound to, both physically and mentally. The fact that she unable to leave the room that she is bound to relate back to why she is not allowed to free her mind, the doctor said …show more content…

Madness is brought to the narrator because of the confinement that the doctor prescribed, in result of having panic attacks. It starts out with John thinking it would best for the narrator to be secluded and she goes along with the idea. “He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me.” In the beginning, she is seen to be accepting of what is happening as she thinks it is meant to help her. But she quickly figures out that the treatment and seclusion is not helping so she brings it upon herself to keep a secret journal. Though she is expressing herself through her journal, she is not able to maintain personal relationships with others because she is locked away from the rest of the

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