Individualism and Paradox in the Works of D. H. Lawrence
When you read something by D. H. Lawrence, you often end up wondering the same thing: does he hate people? Lawrence has a profound interest in us human beings, but it's the fascination of a child picking at a scab that drives him, rather than a kind of scientific or spiritual quest for some mythical "social truth." Some of Lawrence's works--"Insouciance," for example--question mankind's tendencies outright: what good is served by a world of "white-haired ladies" wasting time "caring" and sounding intelligent and cultured and talking about pretentious, bourgeois issues?(2)
But this work is blatant in its negative descriptions of people and their behavior in society. At one point in "Insouciance," the narrator--Lawrence--comes right out and pontificates for several paragraphs on the defects of "modern" society. But for me, it is the more subtle pieces that hold greatest power. When Lawrence hints, insinuates, or implies his views, he is, in a way, letting us discover the kernel of truth, however upsetting or controversial. This process, utilized in "Mercury," is of far greater interest than the almost direct missive from Lawrence used in "Insouciance," that flatly states his view of what "living" really is. For not only must we discover the meaning; we must also decide whether our interpretation is really Lawrence's intent--perhaps we have confused some inadvertent seepage of Lawrence's personnel venom with his intended meaning. It is a risk we will have to take as we analyze works such as "Mercury". Instead of condemning society in "Mercury," Lawrence actually tries to leave it, ascending to "the top of the Merkur," where he has a new vantage point on the world. He develops some of the same ideas as in "Insouciance," but at the end of the work, Lawrence redeems society, or at least apologizes for it, adding new fire to our question. By the end we cannot, with certainty, tell whether Lawrence hates people or not--and this reflects a sort of internal struggle for Lawrence.
One could lessen the scope and dilute the importance of this topic by suggesting that the "Sunday people" Lawrence criticizes are not humanity as a whole but rather a specific group--perhaps the vacationing, upper-middle class Schlegels, perhaps the aspiring, pseudo-intellectual Leonard Basts of the lower middle class, who think culture lies in a misunderstood walk through the woods.
Criticizing the cruelty of society, Baudelaire begins his book, Flowers of Evil, with a warning. To foreshadow the disturbing contents that his book focuses on, Baudelaire describes the unpleasant traits of men. Lured by the words of the Devil, people victimize others. Grotesque images of torture and swarming maggots exemplifies the horrors of our actions. Yes, our actions. Baudelaire puts shame to every human, including the reader, through the word “ours.” Humiliated, the reader dare not to allow himself to be guilty with the worst sin – boredom. Separated by dashes, the last sentence commands the reader to choose whether to fall to the worst or save himself a little bit of dignity. Accused and challenged, the reader is pressured to ponder
The author attempts to caution that people must accept the differences and ideas of people and embrace them, not use them as fuel and drive them further away. He is also trying to state that man does not consider the consequences of his actions before he acts. The burning of books provides an example of this. By burning books, the government is attempting to limit independent ideas so they can make people "happy." That way, people wouldn't have to be smarter or better looking. In theory, this would stop the competition between human beings and in effect, would make people more content with who they are. Many people accept this cause, and the government makes sure that all rebels are stopped in order to maintain their "perfect" society.
At first the dirty old yellow wallpaper makes the narrator feel uneasy. For example, she writes in her journal that “the color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight” (3). However, as time passes and she has very minimal physical stimulation, it is clear that the endless solitary confinement drives her mind towards insanity. Subsequently, she later realizes that there is a sub-pattern in the wallpaper of a trapped woman who is trying to escape. Undoubtedly, this wallpaper is a direct representation of the domestic culture and tradition of docile women in 19th century society – the time in which this literary piece was published. Therefore, the narrator’s act of tearing down the wallpaper is a symbolic representation of women asserting their self-identity and “creeps” around to signify the initial stages of the feminist
After reading and evaluating the works of T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Chuck Palahniuk’s Fight Club, there are various discussion points pertaining to the connection between tragedy and human conditions. Herein, tragedy is the result of a specific human condition, disengagement. This essay aims to identify and explain the behavioural traits between characters in two literary works which leads to a disengagement by the characters from a typical social environment.
When reading Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown” or Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” the audience might notice how they are stories of men who become detached from the society after a notable change in how they act towards the world. However, while Bartleby’s disconnection stems from work-related changes, Young Goodman Brown’s disconnection is caused by a “spiritual” experience. I want to focus on how many things these characters have in common, to show what may have caused their change of view in the societies around them.
The first theme present in the horrific and heart wrenching story is the subordinate position of women within marriage. “The Yellow Wallpaper” begins with the narrator’s wish that her house were haunted like those in which “frightened heroines suffer Gothic horrors” (DeLamotte 5). However, this wish is in essence to empower herself. The narrator is already afraid of her husband and is suffering mentally and emotionally. She desperately wishes for an escape “through fantasy, into a symbolic version of her own plight: a version in which she would have a measure of distance and control” (DeLamotte 6). Throughout the text, Gilman reveals to the reader that during the time in which the story was written, men acquired the working role while women were accustomed to working within the boundaries of their “woman sphere”. This gender division meritoriously kept women in a childlike state of obliviousness and prevented them from reaching any scholastic or professional goals. John, the narrator’s husband, establishes a treatment for his wife through the assumption of his own superior wisdom and maturity. This narrow minded thinking leads him to patronize and control his wife, all in the name of “helping her”. The narrator soon begins to feel suffocated as she is “physically and emotionally trapped by her husband” (Korb). The narrator has zero control in the smallest details of her life and is consequently forced to retreat into her fantasies...
Treichler, Paula A. "Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in "The Yellow Wallpaper"." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, 1984: 61-77.
Imagine being confined in a room for three months, you’ve been suppressing your fears and anxieties from other’s around you, so that you can keep up the facade that you’re in a wonderful marriage. The Yellow Wallpaper written by Charlotte Gilman portrays the struggles of a nineteenth century middle-class marriage. John, Jane’s husband has a special way of showing his love and compassion for his wife. With his persistent and dominate behavior, he has suppressed his wife’s ability to express herself. This literary analysis will focus on the effects of post-partum depression and the rest-cure, how self-expression and oppression throughout the story affected the main character, and how the yellow wallpaper contributed to Jane’s hallucinations.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses her short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” to express her opinions about feminism and originality. Gilman does so by taking the reader through the terrors of one woman's psychological disorder, her entire mental state characterized by her encounters with the wallpaper in her room. She incorporates imagery and symbolism to show how confined the narrator is because of her gender and mental illness.
"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.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a literary exaggeration of Gilman’s personal battle with depression that exploits not only the flaws in the perception of depression in the late 1800s but the flaws in that society’s views on women as well. Set up in a diary format, the entry document a three month stay at a secluded mansion where the narrator’s physician husband John, who has told friends and relatives that there is “really nothing the matter with [his wife],” has brought her in on the sabbatical, of sorts, in hopes of treating her “nervous depression” (394, par.10). The diary format comes from the fact that the narrator is not openly allowed to write or “work” as part of her treatment. The ledger becomes her secret confidante and as well as a map of how her depression becomes a full blown psychosis. Having been instructed by her husband not to focus on her illness she sets her sights on the yellow “flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” on the wallpaper of the converted attic/nursery that John has commandeered as their bedroom for the summer (395, par. 34). As the narrator forces herself into submission in the presents of her husband and his sister Jennie, her depression seem so transform into a state of paranoid hallucinations fueled by her obsession with the yellow wallpaper. Finally the inward turmoil manifest it’s self in a very outward way and erupts into full on madness with the narrator believing she is the woman that she has seen in the wallpaper trying to escape. Having noted the slow decline of the narrator from imaginative and independent to submissive and secretive strikes a personal cord with me, as I to have suffered with depression in my personal life. I plan to identify...
Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote, “The Yellow Wallpaper” in the first person as a journal in the 19th century not with the intent to drive people crazy, but as social criticism, against the haunting psychological horrors of a doctor’s error in treatment of women using the “rest cure,” during this time. Gilman was a women’s right activist, wife, mother, and author who illustrates how women where submissive to male authority and did not have rights during this male dominated era in society. She believed women’s lives were not only controlled, but also limited preventing them from experiencing anything outside the home hindering their creative and intellectual development. Writing was one of the only forms of survival for women during this period.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman was originally read and interpreted as a horror story but from the authors perspective, it was an accurate representation of the troubles most women of her time period went through. It's also considered the The text is most commonly viewed from a feminist and a psychoanalytical perspective which brings to light the apparent symbolism within the story as well as digging beneath the wallpaper and understanding the purpose behind the story.
The narrator's declining mental health is reflected through the characteristics of the house she is trapped in and her husband, while trying to protect her, is actually destroying her. The narrator of the story goes with her doctor/husband to stay in a colonial mansion for the summer. The house is supposed to be a place where she can recover from sever postpartum depression. According to Jennifer Fleissner, "naturalist characters like the narrator of Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" is shown obsessed with the details of an entrapping interiority. In such an example we see naturalism's clearest alteration of previous understandings of gender: its refiguration of domestic spaces, and hence, domestic identity according to the narrative of repetitive work and compulsion that had once served to distinguish public life from a sentimentary understood home" [Fleissner 59].
Joe not only saves Yvette from the rushing flood, a symbol of her repressed sexuality that can overwhelm its banks and destroy the uncomfortable world she inhabits, but also teaches her a valuable lesson: "Be braver in your body (Lawrence 101)." This lesson might be the point of Lawrence's whole life and work. It is the theme that permeates all of his work and it is the punchline of this, his last book. Be braver in your body.