Latasha Toler
Lawrence D’Angelo
EN 102
November 29, 2017
The Madness in The Yellow Wallpaper and The Tell-Tale Heart
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe both describe characters who in the opinions of other people are insane. The character’s hysterical behavior is due to their insanity in depict as the stories goes on. The Yellow Wallpaper is written to reveal how women were treated during the 19th century. The Tell-Tale Heart is mostly written for entertainment.
Both stories are written in the first-person point of view. In both stories the main character insanity is effectively portrayed by irrational behavior and thoughts.
In the short story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe
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The first one is there really a woman creeping around outside in the bushes? The second one is there really a woman trapped in the wallpaper? But is the pattern of the wallpaper interesting and confusing? (Gilman)
If these short stories had not been written in the first-person point of view, then the readers would have not known the characters feelings and reactions to the events in the
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Afterward, he bade the police to sit down, and he brought a chair and sat upon "the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim." The officers were so convinced that there was nothing to be discovered in the apartment that could account for the shrieks that they sat around chatting idly. Then suddenly a noise began within the narrator's ears. He grew agitated and spoke with a heightened voice. The sound increased; it was "a low, dull quick sound." We should note that the words used here to describe the beating of the heart are the exact words used only moments earlier to describe the murder of the old man. (Clift
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story about a woman’s gradual descent into insanity, after the birth of her child. The story was written in 1892 after the author herself suffered from a nervous breakdown, soon after the birth of her daughter in 1885. Gilman did spend a month in a sanitarium with the urging of her physician husband. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story about herself, during the timeframe of when Gilman was in the asylum.
The two pieces of writing that will be compared are The Yellow Wall Paper and The Bell Jar. Both these two pieces of writing are very similar yet very, different. The two main characters being compared are Jane from The Yellow Wall Paper and Esther from The Bell Jar. Both of the women in these stories let the expectations of society get the best of them. The expectations of society drive both these women to the point of becoming almost insane. Both these women just want to be as good as everyone else but it just isn’t possible for them. Also these women let others control their fate. These two characters can be very different as well. As society changes Esther from The Bell Jar has more flexibility of what choices she wants to make, then Jane
The story, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ is one of intrigue and wonder. The story was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and it happens to be the story under analytical scrutiny, hence the title as well as the first sentence. The characters in the story consist of the narrator, Jennie, the wet nurse, the narrator's husband John, and the women in the wallpaper. In the story, the narrator and her husband, as well as her newly born daughter and the nanny for the daughter, take a summer trip to a house away from the city. The husband and brother of the narrator are physicians, and neither believe that she is sick, they say “there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency...”
Charlotte Perkins Gillman and Edgar Allen Poe are both well-known and greatly respected writers in history with similar, but unique writing styles. They both use an unreliable narrator to mislead the reader, but slowly drop hints that something is a little off. In Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper she tells a story narrated by a woman in the late 19th century who has been ordered to get as much rest as possible because of her “temporary nervous depression.” As the story progresses, she starts to slowly lose her sanity from being condemned in her room for so long, and eventually develops a scary obsession with the wallpaper. Poe’s short story, the Cask of Amontillado, is narrated by an Italian man named Montresor who has vowed to get revenge for
"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 “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 Yellow Wallpaper” is written in the first person narrative of a women's secret journal and her descent into madness. With the medical community of the nineteenth century misunderstanding and mistreating women, despite the protests of women. The treatment that John, the narrator’s husband, offers does not help at all, in fact throughout the story the narrator’s journal entrees and condition progressively worsens. Spending the summer in an abandoned mansion in order to recover from what her physician husband believes is a “temporary nervous depression- a slight hysterical tendency” (648). Her husband does not believe that her illness is serious the narrator states,“You see he does not believe I am sick” (647)! According to history men thought that they knew better than women, especially women who were “hysterical.” ...
"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.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Tell-Tale Heart." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 7th ed. New York: Longman, 1999. 33-37.
The “Yellow Wall Paper “ by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a chilling study and experiment of mental disorder in nineteenth century. This is a story of a miserable wife, a young woman in anguish, stress surrounding her in the walls of her bedroom and under the control of her husband doctor, who had given her the treatment of isolation and rest. This short story vividly reflects both a woman in torment and oppression as well as a woman struggling for self expression.
"The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, tells the story of a woman's descent into madness as a result of the "rest and ignore the problem cure" that is frequently prescribed to cure hysteria and nervous conditions in women. More importantly, the story is about control and attacks the role of women in society. The narrator of the story is symbolic for all women in the late 1800s, a prisoner of a confining society. Women are expected to bear children, keep house and do only as they are told. Since men are privileged enough to have education, they hold jobs and make all the decisions. Thus, women are cast into the prison of acquiescence because they live in a world dominated by men. Since men suppress women, John, the narrator's husband, is presumed to have control over the protagonist. Gilman, however, suggests otherwise. She implies that it is a combination of society's control as well as the woman's personal weakness that contribute to the suppression of women. These two factors result in the woman's inability to make her own decisions and voice opposition to men.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is the story of a woman descending into psychosis in a creepy tale which depicts the harm of an old therapy called “rest cure.” This therapy was used to treat women who had “slight hysterical tendencies” and depression, and basically it consisted of the inhibition of the mental processes. The label “slight hysterical tendency” indicates that it is not seen as a very important issue, and it is taken rather lightly. It is also ironic because her illness is obviously not “slight” by any means, especially towards the end when the images painted of her are reminiscent of a psychotic, maniacal person, while she aggressively tears off wallpaper and confuses the real world with her alternative world she has fabricated that includes a woman trapped in the wallpaper. The narrator of this story grows obsessed with the wallpaper in her room because her husband minimizes her exposure to the outside world and maximizes her rest.
The woman behind this work of literature portrays the role of women in the society during that period of time. "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a well written story describing a woman who suffers from insanity and how she struggles to express her own thoughts and feelings. The author uses her own experience to criticize male domination of women during the nineteenth century. Although the story was written fifty years ago, "The Yellow Wallpaper" still brings a clear message how powerless women were during that time.
In the beginning of both of the pieces of literature, the main character(s) have not had the experience that will shape their values yet. Rather, as time moves forward in the stories, the
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story that deals with many different issues that woman in the 19th century had to deal with on a daily basis. Some of these issues were within their control, but many of them were outside of the realm of control for women. The main point that I will focus on is how restricted societal roles can cause insanity. I will do this by deciphering the meaning of the "yellow wallpaper" and its symbolism. In my opinion, I believe that once we get a better understanding of the author's interest in this subject area and get a feel for life in the 19th century, then we will have a better understanding of the story.