Title of the article
Introduction
The paper compares two short stories (Poe’s “the fall of The House of Usher” and Perkins-Gillman’s “the Yellow Wallpaper”), in order to develop arguments about the relationship between characters’ fears and the main theme of each story. In the two short stories, the characters are suffering from various forms of fear under different circumstances. Such fears include fear of fear, fear of death, fear of other people, fear of isolation, fear of punishment, and fear of loss of reputation. Such different forms of fears can assist readers in understanding the motives of the characters.
Poe’s the fall of the House of Usher (overview) An unnamed narrator comes into the House of Usher (a mansion house owned by his friend Roderick Usher). Of late, Roderick has been ailing by a sickness of the mind.
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They have one soul in two bodies. Though Madeline is mentally healthy, her body fails her, and she finally dies. Although Roderick has a healthy body, he is mentally ill. They started fading, even before they became old. As Madeline fades, Roderick also fades. Roderick and Madeline are born from a family lineage, known of suffering from mental sickness. Roderick’s madness (the main character) is the cause of supernatural events in the story. This means that his house is haunted, and his sister is back from the dead.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the main theme is confinement. The narrator is confined to a single room in a huge house. Her husband often spends his nights in town, to fulfill his role as a doctor. The narrator attempts to deal with her fears and isolation. Due to her confinement, she starts losing her sanity (Perkins 175). It can be seen that the narrator slowly turns mad. Her mind turns into a chaotic situation and she starts seeing shapes in the wallpaper. However, in reality, there is no woman entrapped in the wallpaper. The narrator thinks that way because she starts losing her grip on
While on vacation for the summer, the narrator of "The Yellow Wallpaper" is, at the most, depressed at the beginning of their visit to a colonial mansion. Her husband John, however, thinks there is nothing wrong with her except temporary nervous depression (pg 391) and has her confined to a bedroom upstairs. I believe John loves her very much and is trying to help her get well, but he won’t believe there is an illness unless he can read about it or see something physical with his own eyes. "He has no patience with faith, an intense horror of superstition, and he scoffs openly at any talk of things not to be felt and seen and put down in figures." (pg 391) During the time of this writing it was the norm that men dominated women. Women were to be seen but not heard. They were not to argue with men, so she was forced to do as he said. Her husband has forbidden her to "work" until she is well again. (pg 392) She is held prisoner in her bedroom and has nothing to do to keep her mind active except stare at the wallpaper, although she did sneak in writing in her journal when possible.
The woman in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is slowly deteriorating in mental state. When she first moves into the room in the old house, the wallpaper intrigues her. Its pattern entrances her and makes her wonder about its makeup. But slowly her obsession with the wallpaper grows, taking over all of her time. She starts to see the pattern moving, and imagines it to be a woman trapped behind the wallpaper. The total deterioration of her sanity is reached when she becomes the woman she imagined in the wallpaper and begins creeping around the room.
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
In Edgar Allan Poe’s, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the three characters are the unknown narrator, the narrators old time friend Roderick Usher, and Roderick’s sister Madeline Usher. The three characters are unique people with distinct characteristics, but they are tied together by the same type of “mental disorder”. They all suffer from insanity but they each respond to it differently. Roderick and his sister seem to have a spiritual attatchment, and the narrator begins to get sucked into it.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” tells the story of a woman who is trapped in a room covered in yellow wallpaper. The story is one that is perplexing in that the narrator is arguably both the protagonist as well as the antagonist. In the story, the woman, who is the main character, struggles with herself indirectly which results in her descent into madness. The main conflicts transpires between the narrator and her husband John who uses his power as a highly recognize male physician to control his wife by placing limitations on her, forcing her to behave as a sick woman. Hence he forced himself as the superior in their marriage and relationship being the sole decision make. Therefore it can be said what occurred externally resulted in the central conflict of” “The Yellow Wallpaper being internal. The narrator uses the wallpaper as a symbol of authenticy. Hence she internalizes her frustrations rather then openly discussing them.
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a self-told story about a woman who approaches insanity. The story examines the change in the protagonist's character over three months of her seclusion in a room with yellow wallpaper and examines how she deals with her "disease." Since the story is written from a feminist perspective, it becomes evident that the story focuses on the effect of the society's structure on women and how society's values destruct women's individuality. In "Yellow Wallpaper," heroine's attempt to free her own individuality leads to mental breakdown.
An unnamed narrator visits his boyhood friend, Roderick Usher. The duality is expressed mainly between Roderick and his sister Madeline. The siblings have a rather bizarre relationship and are as close as twins. After Madeline collapses he starts to mimic her behavior. “The disease of the lady Madeline had long baffled the skill of her physicians. A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person, and frequent although transient affections of a partially cataleptical character were the unusual diagnosis.” Madeline gave another reason not to be buried. It was possible with her condition to be mistaken as dead when really she was alive. “I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.” This quote shows Roderick’s suggestion that the house has its own intelligence. “To an anomalous species of terror I found him a bounden slave.” Roderick is now afraid and lost and terror over rules
In the story “The Fall of the House of Usher”, Poe presents the history of the end of an illustrious family. As with many of Poe’s stories, setting and mood contribute greatly to the overall tale. Poe’s descriptions of the house itself as well as the inhabitants thereof invoke in the reader a feeling of gloom and terror. This can best be seen first by considering Poe’s description of the house and then comparing it to his description of its inhabitants, Roderick and Madeline Usher.
Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and John Gardner’s “The Ravages of Spring” are two literary works which are unique; however, at the same time indistinguishably similar. Poe’s short story is a piece, which characterizes eighteenth century philosophy whereas Gardner’s tale is more modern. In fact, “The Ravages of Spring” is a story based on Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” which “contemporizes its horror” (Fenlon 481). Both stories are inexplicably gruesome and leave a reader overwhelmed by the bizarreness of the tales. Nevertheless it is the strangeness of the two stories that distinguishes them within the literary world and makes Poe and Gardner authors of gothic literature. “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Ravages of Spring” parallel within their eerie tones towards the stormy environments and the supernatural houses which set the basis for both of the stories. However, by the conclusion of both tales Gardner’s remake of “The Fall of the House of Usher” is still a considerably lighter version of Poe’s gothic story.
During Edgar Allen Poe’s life he managed to make a name for himself, one that was much different then anyone else’s of his time. Despite living for only 40 years, the young genius was often times referred to as the “Tomahawk Man” for his voracious and critical reviews. Above all else, he is still considered today as the 19th century’s most prized possession for his poetry, literary reviews and tales of mystery and suspense. With many of his masterpieces still being read and celebrated today, Poe not only created remarkable works of art to read, but also very intrinsic, dark and often times irrational characters to share it with as well. In the gothic short story, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe creates the irrational character of Roderick Usher using his appearance, thoughts, and actions to his advantage.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator becomes more depressed throughout the story because of the recommendation of isolation that was made to her. In this short story the narrator is detained in a lonesome, drab room in an attempt to free herself of a nervous disorder. The narrator’s husband, a physician, adheres to this belief and forces his wife into a treatment of solitude. Rather than heal the narrator of her psychological disorder, the treatment only contributes to its effects, driving her into a severe depression. Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, where in she is locked into an upstairs room.
...h his sister or if he is, indeed, being possessed by evil forces. Nevertheless, Poe’s portrayal of Roderick’s deterioration raises important questions about the causes, stages, and effects of insanity (Paragraph from Wilson 56).
The wallpaper, the narrator's obsession, destroyed the peace of mind for all parties concerned. The imagery, used in the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper", paints a vivid picture and the reader becomes a front row spectator to the mental deterioration of the narrator to utter insanity.
Roderick Usher feared his sickness, his “dead” twin sister, his hereditary “disease,” his house, and his fears themselves. His worrying and terror over his many fears, along with the insufferable atmosphere of the mansion, eventually lead to his demise. The narrator of this story also had his many fears, but exercised control over them until the very end of the story, when he fled of panic and horror. The two contrasting examples of fear in this story show that you must control your fears, or they will end up controlling
Everyone at some point in their life has felt like they were almost driven crazy by someone or something. This is the case for the main character in Charlotte Perkins Stetson’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”. During this story, the protagonist is locked in a room in which she despises simply because of the wallpaper. As the story progresses, she starts to notice figures that seem to be trapped in the wallpaper. I firmly believe that the figures that seem to be trapped in the wallpaper not only represent the main character’s struggles, but also other woman who have suffered the horrible mistreatment of mental illness and women that were subject to punishment for trying to break out of their domestic spheres.