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Central theme of the cask of amontillado
The yellow wallpaper by by charlotte percy gilman
Central theme of the cask of amontillado
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The “The Yellow Wall-paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman and “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe share a common theme of confinement and both main characters illustrate insanity, what’s of particular interest is the differences between Poe and Gilman’s portrayal of insanity and how their characters experience confinement. Gilman and Poe come from different backgrounds, write for different reasons, and use different writing styles, therefore, give different interpretations of mental illness unfortunately their interpretations continue the stigma of how mentally ill man and woman are pigeon-holed in literature. Gilman, being a prominent American feminist, wrote “The Yellow Wall-paper” with the intention of exposing how women were treated …show more content…
in society during the nineteenth-century. “The Yellow Wall-paper” shed light on the conventional nineteenth-century marriage, where a distinction between domestic role of the woman and the dominate role of the man led to dire consequences. By drawing from her personal experience, having recovered from a nervous breakdown herself in 1890, Gilman provides a truly horrifying glimpse at how these types of social limitations can cause total emotional collapse. Similar to Gilman, Poe used fragments of autobiographical material to help develop one of his characters in “The Cask of Amontillado”. The inspiration for the arrogant victim Fortunato is allegedly based on one of Poe’s own enemies, Thomas Dunn English. Speculation has it that Poe’s story was in response to English’s novel “1844” in which Poe is portrayed as a drunk. Poe’s own desire for revenge may have inspired him to create “The Cask of Amontillado” but Poe relied heavily on his vivid imagination to create his narrator’s disturbing depiction of madness. While both authors voiced their stories in the first person and both narrator’s are considered unreliable it’s what makes each narrator untrustworthy that’s quite different. Poe’s narrator Montresor claims that a gentleman Fortunato has insulted him and finds this disrespectfulness unacceptable. He believes he is above the law and decides to name himself judge, jury, and executioner. He is devoted to his own point of view, which is cold, cruel, and vengeful making him a biased narrator. Montresor doesn’t tell his story until half a century after the actual event, a significant amount of time, which makes us question how reliable his account of the events are. On the other hand, Gilman creates a nameless narrator in “The Yellow Wall-paper” who weaves her complaints about feeling trapped and unhappy with confessions that it all might be because of her nervous condition.
We are never quite sure if the narrator’s perceptions actually reflect what’s going on because of her uncertainty and hesitation at the beginning of the story. While all this, along with her constant claims that she is going mad, creates an unreliable narrator, it does allow her to convey several different emotions as her moods change. Each author used tone to display their character’s outlook which helped the reader connect to the characters. We learn the different reasons for Poe and Gilman’s characters going insane. Poe’s main character Montresor is characterized as determined, cunning, calculating and devious common traits given to mentally ill men in literature. Montresor’s madness was brought on by his unrelenting drive to inflict revenge on Fortunato for insulting him. He doesn’t mind telling us about torturing and murdering Fortunato, in fact, he believes he handled the situation appropriately and shows no …show more content…
remorse. Resembling Montresor, Gilman’s narrator in “The Yellow Wall-paper” is in a state of irrational compulsion but she is no homicidal maniac. Unlike Poe, Gilman suggests that the captivity of marriage has slowly driven her heroine to the brink of madness. The story is narrated through the journal entries of a woman who is confined to a bedroom by her overbearing husband in order to cure her “Slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman, 433). Gilman portrays her heroine as meager, meek, oppressed, and defeated common traits assigned to describe mentally ill women in literature. Confinement and freedom are themes represented strongly in both of these stories.
Who’s in control of the confinement versus freedom is not the same in each story. In Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-paper” the narrator’s health deteriorates due to the restrictions placed upon her by her husband. She is not allowed to do anything that would possibly upset her fragile mind and starts to develop an unhealthy fascination with the wallpaper of her room. Overwhelmed by her isolation and inactivity the main character takes the leap from depression to a full psychotic break. In Gilman’s story the mental constraints placed upon the narrator, even more so than the physical ones, are what ultimately break
her. In contrast, Poe’s main character, Montresor is in control of Fortunato’s fate. The story takes place in the catacombs underneath Montresor’s family home. We are taken on a journey through the catacombs which Montresor described in detail: “We passed through a range low arches, descended, passed on, and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow than flame.”(Poe 305). As Montresor leads Fortunato further and further into smaller and smaller crypts, each one more disgusting than the last, freedom becomes less likely. Montresor eventually chains Fortunato up and bricks him inside a man-sized crypt with no way out. Montresor, contrary to Fortunato’s fate, is free at the end of the story. The two short stories “The Yellow Wall-paper” and “The Cask of Amontillado” may share a common theme of confinement but we experience the theme through different perspectives. I think Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” is an entertaining piece of literature but I found Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-paper” a slightly more disturbing portrayal of madness because of the real issues the main character faced in the story. Countless pieces of literature pigeon-hole mentally ill women as meager and week and mentally ill man as cunning and calculating and with these two stories those traditions continued.
Gilman is an author whose writing is based on individuals making up America's collective identity. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is from the vantage points of being a woman, at a time when women were not supposed to have individual thoughts and personalities. At this time in history, the social roles of women were very well-defined: mothers and caretakers of the family, prim and proper creatures that were pleasant to look at, seen but not heard, and irrational and emotional. The identity of women were presupposed on them by men. At the time this story was written, social criticisms were on the rise and writers had more of an outlet to express themselves. Women's suffrage provided by many female writers, such as Gilman, the means to air the wrongs against women.
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 short story, " The Yellow Wallpaper", written by Charlotte Gilman, and "The Cask of Amontillado" written by Edgar Allan Poe, are stories in which the plots are very different, but share similar qualities with the elements in the story. "The Cask of Amontillado" is a powerful tale of revenge, in which the narrator of the tale pledges revenge upon Fortunato for an insult. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story about a woman, her psychological difficulties and her husband's therapeutic treatment of her illness. She struggles over her illness, and battle's her controlling husband. The settings in both stories are very important, they influence the characters, and help with the development of the plot.
Susan B. Anthony, a woman’s rights pioneer, once said, “Oh, if I could but live another century and see the fruition of all the work for women! There is so much yet to be done” (“Women’s Voices Magazine”). Women’s rights is a hot button issue in the United States today, and it has been debated for years. In the late 1800’s an individual named Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote literature to try and paint a picture in the audience’s mind that gender inferiority is both unjust and horrific. In her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman makes the ultimate argument that women should not be seen as subordinate to men, but as equal.
The ideas expressed by Gilman are femininity, socialization, individuality and freedom in the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Gilman uses these ideas to help readers understand what women lost during the 1900’s. She also let her readers understand how her character Jane escaped the wrath of her husband. She uses her own mind over the matter. She expresses these ideas in the form of the character Jane. Gilman uses an assortment of ways to convey how women and men of the 1900’s have rules pertaining to their marriages. Women are the homemakers while the husbands are the breadwinners. Men treated women as objects, as a result not giving them their own sound mind.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is set in the 18th century, and this specific time era helps substantiate Gilman’s view. During the 18th century women did not have a lot of rights and were often considered a lesser being to man. Women often had their opinions
“Gilman railed against the condition of women who were regulated to a life of confining costume and care for child and home”(Article 2). Women felt they were capable of working jobs that were often labeled as a “man’s job”. “Gilman introduced her readers to a country of women who work cooperatively”(Article 2). Gilman did a lot to be involved in the Suffrage Act. She spoke at the 1896 convention of the Women’s Suffrage Association, she also wrote a wide variety of writings, from poems to lectures, political essays and novels. Her most famous work “The Yellow Wallpaper” published in 1892 and Womens Economics in 1898. “She envisioned a world in which women were free from the drudgery of cooking and cleaning and could engage in intellectual pursuits- a world in which women threw off their corsets and breathed freely”(article 2). There were many risks starting this movement, men weren’t used to women speaking out or even having an opinion. Many people disagreed with their statements, wanting life to be the way it always is, men being the “breadwinners” of the household. Women were often arrested for going against the social norm. Women decided this needed to change, after all they are people therefore they should have the same
In “the Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman used that the first feminist wave, which was the period that she raised up, for the background. Especially, she used the men’s power in the book when she started to telling the story:
...ow Wallpaper" and Henry Isben’s play A Doll's House both prove that independence is key in a woman’s life in order to feel free; yet social norms of the Victorian Age cause freedom to come at a high cost. Nora, the heroine in A Doll’s House, escapes from her husband’s confinement by leaving her family. While this seems revolutionary, Nora’s freedom will only cause confusion in her life. Had she not had her personal awakening on individualism, she would have remained happy with her family. In the “Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator achieves freedom through madness. The narrator thinks she is free when she goes mad, yet this is only a brief feeling, as she will most likely realize the publicity of her mental state will only increase the restrictions upon her. In both texts, the heroines break for freedom will only result in more confusion and confinement in their lives.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a 19th century, journalist from Connecticut. She was also a feminist. Gilman was not conservative when it came to expressing her views publically. Many of her published works openly expressed her thoughts on woman’s rights. She also broke through social norms when she chose to write her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” in 1892, which described her battle with mental illness. These literary breakthroughs, made by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, help us see that the 19th century was a time of change for women.
Charlotte Gilman was a renowned feminist author who published most of her work in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. Her works, of which "The Yellow Wallpaper" is most famous, reflect her feminist views. Gilman used her writings as a way of expressing these views to the public. At the time "The Yellow Wallpaper" was written, the attitude in colonial America towards feminists was not one of tolerance or acceptance. In the mid-1880s, Gilman suffered a nervous breakdown and eventually was referred to a specialist in neurological disorders. The doctor's diagnosis was such: Gilman was perfectly healthy. The doctor ordered Gilman to domesticate her life and to immediately stop her writings. Gilman went by the doctor's orders, and nearly went mad. Now although "Yellow Wallpaper" is a fictional story, it becomes clear that the story was significantly influenced by Gilman's life experiences. Gilman seems to be exploring the depths of mental illness through her writing.
Gilman creates a horrific tone that helps explore the idea of freedom and confinement within a certain place. The story is created to follow the situation of the narrator and how slowly she begins to deteriorate psychologically due to the wallpaper. The narrator is never assigned a name, therefore it can be assumed that the story is suppose to serve as a voice for the women who have been in a similar situation and have lost their freedom and say on their own lives. However, the narrator appears to come from a wealthy family with privilege so there cannot be this idea that all women who have been through this form of depression and inequalities have experienced it in the same form. Through the use of imagery, the reader was able to understand and clearly visualize the situation in which the narrator is in and see how she has begun to slowly deteriorate, even though she is finally freed in the end of the story, or at least that is what is assumed. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is indeed a very profound image of what it was like to be a female during the 19th century while emphasizing the themes of freedom and confinement. Even though it illustrates the impact that confinement can have on a person, it restricts the situation to fit only women who had similar social backgrounds as the narrator, which is
"The Yellow Wallpaper" is a fictionalized account of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's own postpartum depression. Gilman was a social critic and feminist who wrote prolifically about the necessity of social and sexual equality, particularly about women's need for economic independence. According to critic Valarie Gill,
"Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wall-paper"—Writing Women." EDSITEment: The Best of the Humanities on the Web. Web. 05 Mar. 2011.
Gilman has stated in multiple papers that the main reason for her writing “The Yellow Wallpaper” was to shed light on her awful experience with this ‘rest cure’. However, she also managed to inject her own feminist agenda into the piece. Charlotte Perkins Gilman chose to include certain subtle, but alarming details regarding the narrator’s life as a representation of how women were treated at the time. She wants us to understand why the narrator ends up being driven to madness, or in her case, freedom. There are untold layers to this truly simple, short story just like there were many layers to Gilman