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Charlotte perkins gilman’s “the yellow wallpaper”
Critical essay on the yellow wallpaper by charlotte perkins gilman
Critical essay on the yellow wallpaper by charlotte perkins gilman
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Recommended: Charlotte perkins gilman’s “the yellow wallpaper”
The Writing on the Wallpaper
There are few things less distressing than the inability to express yourself, especially if you believe you are withholding something very important. This is a realization we arrive to quickly while reading “The Yellow Wallpaper”, a short story written by Charlotte Gilman. Published in 1892, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is one of Gilman’s most famous works and it established Gilman as a feminist and a reformer. After being diagnosed in 1887 with postnatal depression, a condition we come to find is shared by the narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman was instructed by her physician to never write again and to seek a domestic life. Already in disagreement with traditional Victorian gender roles, Gilman disregarded this
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prescription and moved to California. Once there, she not only continued to write, but she also became a spokesperson for women’s rights, claiming that a society where women were treated as equal would make for a more productive society as a whole (Benet’s 380). We will discuss the different aspects of this story that construct Gilman’s masterpiece, and how she intelligently and artistically used her writing to convey her abhorrence concerning gender roles in the Victorian era. Written in first person, such as thoughts jotted down in a journal, “The Yellow Wallpaper” gives us a vivid glimpse into the mind of a woman struggling with the condition most commonly known today as postpartum depression, which occurs after a woman gives birth.
The main characters in this short story are the unnamed narrator, John, our narrator’s husband and physician, and John’s sister Jennie, who is the couple’s housekeeper. The story begins as the couple travels to a colonial mansion in the countryside for a summer vacation, along with their baby, the baby’s caretaker Mary, and Jennie. After being diagnosed by John with anxiety and depression, though making it clear he does not believe she is really ill, our narrator is prescribed a get-well regimen that includes a great deal of rest; her schedule is laid out for her by the hour. Though admitting she could be more grateful for her husband’s concern for her, our narrator reveals she disagrees with these methods, and that what she would really like to do is write and work. Nevertheless, she spends most of her time alone in the room John selected, a room that had previously been a nursery, resting as she is instructed to do. However, she still continues to write. While in this room, she spends a great deal of time describing the wallpaper. Our narrator states, “I never saw a worse paper in my life. One of those sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin.”(Gilman 590) She continues to describe the paper by writing, “The color is repellent, almost revolting: a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded …show more content…
by the slow-turning sunlight.”(Gilman 590). Though clearly unimpressed by this rather dreadful sounding wallpaper, it sparks her curiosity and begins to consume many of her thoughts. During their stay, our narrator informs us that she confesses to her husband she would like to change rooms to escape the wallpaper, and later even tells him that she would like to leave the mansion altogether, but he tells her he believes the stay is helping her improve and does not pay any further attention to her desires.
Though she acknowledges her husband’s affection towards her, and we come to believe John truly is well-intentioned, we can pick up on our narrator’s growing frustration in not having her wishes respected. Being both her husband and her physician, it is clear that John has the final say in things, which seems to make the protagonist’s depression and anxiety only intensify. As she informs us of how well Jennie takes care of her and the house, and how well Mary cares for the baby, it becomes clear she does not hold the same principles as they do. While she admires their dutifulness, our narrator longs for excitement and expression, things it seems Jennie and Mary give very little thought to, if any at all. It seems strange to our narrator to think that they could be content with such a life, but she bears this as a reflection on herself for not confining to the role society has for her, not as a reflection on women such as Jennie and Mary. As she lies in bed unable to sleep at night, she studies the wallpaper. She begins to develop an obsession with it, as she studies it to find some sort of organization, symmetry, or order for it being the way that it is.
It seems as though she begins to fixate on the wallpaper as a means for escaping her own reality, which only increases her obsession and further intensifies her condition. As she continues to study the wallpaper, she begins to see a woman trapped behind the pattern. The woman and the pattern become a mystery to her, one she is determined to solve. As she becomes increasingly fascinated by this wallpaper woman, she also becomes increasingly mad as she is intent on freeing her from her wallpaper prison. “Upon recognition of the wallpaper woman, who in this story clearly represents not only the narrator's own divided self but all women who are bound and inhibited by a society that insists that women are childlike and incapable of self-actualization, the narrator begins a descent into the vicarious experience of madness through a virtually self-conscious and planned inducement of hysteria.” (Quawas 46). As if freeing this imaginary woman will somehow free our narrator from her physical and psychological confinement, the story then ends with the narrator locking herself in the room and ripping the wallpaper from the walls. Now, she claims that she is finally free. She identifies herself as the woman from the wallpaper, and upon discovery by her husband, she declares she has been released and cannot be imprisoned in the wallpaper again, as it has mostly been pulled from the walls (Gilman 598). Gilman struggled heavily with the gender roles of her time, and fought them with feminism. She was desperate to be heard and have her ideas respected much like the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper”. As a creative, independent woman, she longed for a life greater than a role as a subservient housewife. She had the confidence to believe she was capable of far more than what society at her time allowed, and used her writing of this short story to prove a point to men and women alike; that the gender roles in the Victorian era were nothing short of ridiculous and insulting, and that women were deserving of freedom just as much as that of men.
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 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 Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” has opened many people’s eyes since it was first published in 1892. In the beginning, readers only acknowledged Gilman’s story as showing how women with mental illnesses were treated by physicians during the 1800’s. They overlooked the deeper meaning the text contained, and it was not until later that readers discovered it. Eventually, “The Yellow Wallpaper” became known as feminist literature. Gilman does a great job showing how women suffered from inadequate medical treatment, but above that she depicts how nineteenth century women were trapped in their roles in society and yearned to escape from being controlled by males.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a story about an anonymous female narrator and her husband John who is a physician who has rented a colonial manner in the summer. Living in that house, the narrator felt odd living there. Her husband, john who is a physician and also a doctor to his wife felt that the narrator is under nervous depression. He further mentions that when a person is under depression, every feeling is an odd feeling. Therefore, the narrator was not given permission by John to work but just to take medication and get well fast. This made the narrator to become so fixated with the yellow wallpaper in the former nursery in which she located. She was depressed for a long time and became even more depressed. This ha...
It is clear that in their marriage, her husband makes her decisions on her behalf and she is expected to simply follow blindly. Their relationship parallels the roles that men and women play in marriage when the story was written. The narrator’s feelings of powerlessness and submissive attitudes toward her husband are revealing of the negative effects of gender roles. John’s decision to treat the narrator with rest cure leads to the narrator experiencing an intense feeling of isolation, and this isolation caused her mental decline. Her descent into madness is at its peak when she grows tears the wallpaper and is convinced that “[she’s] got out at last, in spite of [John] and Jennie… and [they] can’t put her back!”
When first reading the gothic feminist tale, “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, one might assume this is a short story about a women trying to save her sanity while undergoing treatment for postpartum depression. Gilman herself had suffered post-natal depression and was encouraged to undergo the “rest cure” to cure her hysteria. The treatment prescribed to Gilman resulted in her having a very similar experience as the narrator in the short story. The “perfect rest” (648), which consisted of forced bed rest and isolation sparked the inspiration for “The Yellow Wallpaper.” This story involving an unreliable narrator, became an allegory for repression of women. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, Gilman illustrates the seclusion and oppression of women in the nineteenth century society by connecting the female imprisonment, social and mental state, and isolation to the objects in and around the room.
At the time Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” she was considered a prominent feminist writer. This piece of background information allows the readers to see Gilman’s views on women’s rights and roles in the 18th century; “The Yellow Wallpaper” suggests that women in the 18th century were suppressed into society’s marital gender roles. Gilman uses the setting and figurative language, such as symbolism, imagery, and metaphors to convey the theme across.
In a female oppressive story about a woman driven from postpartum depression to insanity, Charlotte Gilman uses great elements of literature in her short story, The Yellow Wallpaper. Her use of feminism and realism demonstrates how woman's thoughts and opinions were considered in the early 1900?s.
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," the reader is treated to an intimate portrait of developing insanity. At the same time, the story's first person narrator provides insight into the social attitudes of the story's late Victorian time period. The story sets up a sense of gradually increasing distrust between the narrator and her husband, John, a doctor, which suggests that gender roles were strictly defined; however, as the story is just one representation of the time period, the examination of other sources is necessary to better understand the nature of American attitudes in the late 1800s. Specifically, this essay will analyze the representation of women's roles in "The Yellow Wallpaper" alongside two other texts produced during this time period, in the effort to discover whether Gilman's depiction of women accurately reflects the society that produced it.
Throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells her readers the story of a woman desperate to be free. Gilman’s use of symbolism is nothing short of brilliant in telling the story of a new mother suffering from postpartum depression and fighting her way through societies ideas of what a woman should be. When her husband, John, also known as her physician, tells her nothing is wrong with her mind, at first she believes him because she knows that society tells her she should. However, with her husband’s misdiagnosis, or attempt to keep his wife sane for the sake of their reputation, comes a short journey into madness for his wife, Jane. Jane’s downward spiral, as one may call it, turns out to be not so downward when the reader
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.
Advocating social, political, legal, and economic rights for women equal to those of men, Charlotte Perkins Gilman speaks to the “female condition” in her 1892 short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by writing about the life of a woman and what caused her to lose her sanity. The narrator goes crazy due partially to her prescribed role as a woman in 1892 being severely limited. One example is her being forbidden by her husband to “work” which includes working and writing. This restricts her from begin able to express how she truly feels. While she is forbidden to work her husband on the other hand is still able to do his job as a physician. This makes the narrator inferior to her husband and males in general. The narrator is unable to be who she wants, do what she wants, and say what she wants without her husband’s permission. This causes the narrator to feel trapped and have no way out, except through the yellow wallpaper in the bedroom.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," is the disheartening tale of a woman suffering from postpartum depression. Set during the late 1890s, the story shows the mental and emotional results of the typical "rest cure" prescribed during that era and the narrator’s reaction to this course of treatment. It would appear that Gilman was writing about her own anguish as she herself underwent such a treatment with Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell in 1887, just two years after the birth of her daughter Katherine. The rest cure that the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" describes is very close to what Gilman herself experienced; therefore, the story can be read as reflecting the feelings of women like herself who suffered through such treatments. Because of her experience with the rest cure, it can even be said that Gilman based the narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" loosely on herself. But I believe that expressing her negative feelings about the popular rest cure is only half of the message that Gilman wanted to send. Within the subtext of this story lies the theme of oppression: the oppression of the rights of women especially inside of marriage. Gilman was using the woman/women behind the wallpaper to express her personal views on this issue.
Her tense mind is then further pushed towards insanity by her husband, John. As one of the few characters in the story, John plays a pivotal role in the regression of the narrator’s mind. Again, the narrator uses the wallpaper to convey her emotions. Just as the shapes in the wallpaper become clearer to the narrator, in her mind, she is having the epiphany that John is in control of her.
Upon moving in to her home she is captivated, enthralled with the luscious garden, stunning greenhouse and well crafted colonial estate. This was a place she fantasized about, qualifying it as a home in which she seemed comfortable and free. These thoughts don’t last for long, however, when she is prescribed bed rest. She begins to think that the wallpaper, or someone in the wallpaper is watching her making her feel crazy. She finally abandons her positivity towards what now can be considered her husband’s home, and only labels negative features of the home. For example, the narrator rants about the wallpaper being, “the strangest yellow…wallpaper! It makes me think of… foul, bad yellow things” (Gilman). One can only imagine the mental torture that the narrator is experiencing, staring at the lifeless, repulsive yellow hue of ripping