Solitary confinement will cause destruction to anyone's mental state, but what if said mental state was already rocky to begin with? In, "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a woman, with a slight mental problem, is put into a room, where her state of mind slowly, declines as she falls into madness. The narrator's mental status is calm at first and levelheaded, only having a slight mental issue, then later on is slightly scattered by focusing on the wallpaper in her room, and finally by her beginning to see a woman crawling around outside and even on the wallpaper. The narrator's mental state is severely altered as she is kept isolated; her thoughts begin normal, but differ greatly as she falls into madness.
In the beginning, the narrator talks about her surroundings, and why she is in her current situation. Her state of mind is clear, as she describes what is going on prior to her being set in this room. As the narrator writes about her husband she alludes to the fact that she suffers from an illness that her husband, who happens to be a well known physician, does no...
Through the story "The Yellow Wallpaper," written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the main character is driven into a state of madness as a result of isolation. The narrator explains that she is suffering from a slight nervous depression, leaving her husband to treat her with rest. She and her husband moved to a house in the country house expecting improvement. During this time, she is placed in a solitary room with walls covered in yellow wallpaper against her will. The excessive abundance of social isolation that this character experiences brings her to an inevitable mental breakdown.
The narrator is forbidden from work and confined to rest and leisure in the text because she is supposedly stricken with, "…temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency," that is diagnosed by both her husband and her brother, who is also a doctor (1).
The narrator begins the story by recounting how she speculates there may be something wrong with the mansion they will be living in for three months. According to her the price of rent was way too cheap and she even goes on to describe it as “queer”. However she is quickly laughed at and dismissed by her husband who as she puts it “is practical in the extreme.” As the story continues the reader learns that the narrator is thought to be sick by her husband John yet she is not as convinced as him. According
The narrator, a new mother, is revoked of her freedom to live a free life and denied the fact that she is “sick”, perhaps with postpartum depression, by her husband, a physician, who believes whatever sorrows she is feeling now will pass over soon. The problematic part of this narrative is that this woman is not only kept isolated in a room she wishes to have nothing to do with, but her creative expression is revoked by her husband as we can see when she writes: “there comes John, and I must put this away, - he hates to have me write a word (Gilman,
Trapped. Stuck. No way out. Faced with these insurmountable obstacles, a character may deny their perilous situation. Some may try to escape. However, in the late 1800s, there often was no way out. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator is vacationing with her controlling and prescriptive husband, who is also a respected physician. Suffering from mental health issues, the only cure offered by her husband is bedrest and isolation. While the narrator descends into solitary madness, she becomes more and more unstable, leading to the story’s dramatic conclusion. Throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator shows that she is rebellious, imaginative, and eventually, psychotic.
Women have traditionally been known as the less dominant sex. Through history women have fought for equal rights and freedom. They have been stereotyped as being housewives, and bearers of children. Only with the push of the Equal Rights Amendment have women had a strong hold on the workplace alongside men. Many interesting characters in literature are conceived from the tension women have faced with men. This tension comes from men, society, in general, and within a woman herself. Two interesting short stories, “The Yellow Wall-paper" and “The Story of an Hour," focus on a woman’s fix near the turn of the 19th century. This era is especially interesting
Narrator and Point of View in The Yellow Wallpaper and The Story of an Hour
...Mental Health Issues in Long-Term Solitary and "Supermax" Confinement. Crime and Delinquency, 49(124), 124-154. doi:10.1177/0011128702239239
When an inmate has a current mental illness, prior to entering the prison, and it goes undiagnosed and untreated, the illness can just worsen and aggravate. Mental illness can be described in a variety of ways. Solitary confinement does not help prisoners in the long run. Solitary confinement actually has the potential to cause inmates to lose their ability to control and manage their anger.
To initiate on the theme of control I will proceed to speak about the narrators husband, who has complete control over her. Her husband John has told her time and time again that she is sick; this can be viewed as control for she cannot tell him otherwise for he is a physician and he knows better, as does the narrator’s brother who is also a physician. At the beginning of the story she can be viewed as an obedient child taking orders from a professor, and whatever these male doctors say is true. The narrator goes on to say, “personally, I disagree with their ideas” (557), that goes without saying that she is not very accepting of their diagnosis yet has no option to overturn her “treatment” the bed rest and isolation. Another example of her husband’s control would be the choice in room in which she must stay in. Her opinion is about the room she stays in is of no value. She is forced to stay in a room she feels uneasy about, but John has trapped her in this particular room, where the windows have bars and the bed is bolted to the floor, and of course the dreadful wall paper, “I never worse paper in my life.” (558) she says. Although she wishes to switch rooms and be in one of the downstairs rooms one that, “opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window. ...” (558). However, she knows that, “John would not hear of it.”(558) to change the rooms.
When they are exposed to stimuli, their brain struggles to process it. Inmates reported panic attacks during their time in solitary confinement. Inmates reported difficulty with thinking, concentration and memory. Some cases were very severe and led to states of extreme confusion and disorientation. Inmates reported having aggressive thoughts and fantasies of revenge and causing harm to prison guards.
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.
Women have traditionally been known as the less dominant sex. Through history women have fought for equal rights and freedom. They have been stereotyped as being housewives, and bearers and nurturers of the children. Only recently with the push of the Equal Rights Amendment have women had a strong hold on the workplace alongside men. Many interesting characters in literature are conceived from the tension women have faced with men. This tension is derived from men; society, in general; and within a woman herself. Two interesting short stories, “The Yellow Wall-paper and “The Story of an Hour, “ focus on a woman’s plight near the turn of the 19th century. This era is especially interesting because it is a time in modern society when women were still treated as second class citizens. The two main characters in these stories show similarities, but they are also remarkably different in the ways they deal with their problems and life in general. These two characters will be examined to note the commonalities and differences. Although the two characters are similar in some ways, it will be shown that the woman in the “The Story of an Hour” is a stronger character based on the two important criteria of rationality and freedom.
Can a story contain more than one antagonist? In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman there is an overwhelming amount of conflict the unnamed narrator must endure. The protagonist of “The Yellow Wallpaper” is the narrator who is suffering from depression and is taken to a house for the summer to rest. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the wallpaper is the antagonist because it causes the narrator to have a breakdown at the end of the short story; John, the narrator’s husband, cannot be the antagonist because he is doing what he believes is best for her, and the narrator cannot be the antagonist because she wants to improve her mental state.
The story begins when she and her husband have just moved into a colonial mansion to relieve her chronic nervousness. An ailment her husband has conveniently diagnosed. The husband is a physician and in the beginning of her writing she has nothing but good things to say about him, which is very obedient of her. She speaks of her husband as if he is a father figure and nothing like an equal, which is so important in a relationship. She writes, "He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction." It is in this manner that she first delicately speaks of his total control over her without meaning to and how she has no choices whatsoever. This control is perhaps so imbedded in our main character that it is even seen in her secret writing; "John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition...so I will let it alone and talk about the house." Her husband suggests enormous amounts of bed rest and no human interaction at all. He chooses a "prison-like" room for them to reside in that he anticipates will calm our main character even more into a comma like life but instead awakens her and slowly but surely opens her eyes to a woman tearing the walls down to freedom.