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Themes and poetic style of Sylvia Plath
Essay on sylvia plath
Themes and poetic style of Sylvia Plath
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In this story I do not think that John was trying to help his wife at all. In my opinion I would say that John didn't have any care in the world for his wife, he wanted her to go crazy without her knowing. He was trying to lead her into something that she didn't want to do, but she didn't notice that anything was happening. In the beginning of the story John’s wife wanted to stay in the main floor of the mansion, because there were beautiful roses, windows, a beautiful open plaza and very pretty hangings on the walls. The main level was nothing like the room that John made her stay in. “I am afraid, but I dont care --- there is something strange about the house --- I can feel it.” (648) I think John knew that she was having troubles sleeping, he was saying that he put her in the room to help her sleep, to make her think that he was trying to help her. …show more content…
“There comes John, and I must put this away, he hates to have me write a word.” (649) He doesn’t believe that writing her thoughts down will help her at all, I think that John is trying to purposely take her likes and hobbies away to see what she does with out any of it. John wants her to sit alone in a room, that only can only fit one bed, only has one window and a room that has no color at all. As the story goes on she gets obsessed with the yellow wallpaper. The wallpaper has a very light yellow tint, it is torn off the in all different places, has small holes in the wallpaper. She begins fanatically tracing the pattern of the wallpaper and soon becomes convinced that there's a woman trapped within the paper. John’s wife began to talk about how the Fourth of July is over, John thought that they should have company over, because his wife has not seen anyone else in a very long
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.
In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator weaves a tale of a woman with deep seeded feelings of depression. Her husband, a physician, takes her to a house for a span of three months where he puts her in a room to recuperate. That “recuperation” becomes her nemesis. She is so fixated on the “yellow wallpaper” that it seems to serve as the definition of her bondage. She gradually over time begins to realize what the wallpaper seems to represents and goes about plotting ways to overcome it. In a discussion concerning the wallpaper she states, “If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to try it, little by little.” “There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is beginning to notice. I don’t like the look in his eyes.”
John’s approach appears to be logical as he decided it would be better for his wife to escape her depression by moving temporary to an isolated estate where air, water, greenery, and calmness should be the uplifting factors in his wife’s journey towards gaining strength and getting better. The narrator disagrees with her husband’s decisions on how she should stay and do what he decided for her in this retreat, but follows his orders regardless. John’s treatment of his wife consists of medical prescriptions, “I take phosphates or phosphites-whichever it is-and tonics,...
As readers know, the narrator was barred from doing any “exciting” or strenuous activities such as reading, writing, or even visiting family members. Therefore, the only “interesting” source of mental stimulation available to her was the yellow wallpaper in her “prison”, thus resulting in her increasing infatuation. The start of her obsession begins after John’s refusal to let the narrator move to another room, which is when readers first uncover her disgust towards the wallpaper, as shown when she writes, “No wonder the children hated it! I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room long” (Gilman). But, her hatred doesn’t stop there, for after a failed attempt to persuade John to remove the wallpaper, her repugnance only intensifies as she begins to read further and further into the wallpaper. The narrator states, “There is a recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (Gilman), which shows that she is beginning to visualize disturbing images in it. However, her obsession truly takes a life of its own after John refuses to let the narrator visit her relatives, as this is when she begins to believe that the wallpaper is a “alive”. It is after
Finally, the yellow wallpaper presents perspectives of how men control females. As stated previously, In the story, John uses his power as a doctor to control his wife. He encaged his wife in a summer home, placing her in a room filled with barricades and many faults. As a human she is deprived of her rights and her ability to form house duties is taken away so she can rest as he calls it. Without a doubt, she fell into insanity because of the situation she was placed in. When she ripped the paper off the wall, it was a sign of freedom from her husband, and the bars that held her captive for weeks. Certainly she has a vivid imagination and being placed in bondage and unable to write which in turn lead her to mental health problems.
The narrator believed that the house they were living in was a major contribution to her illness but her plea, was ignored. The narrator says "I really was not gaining here and I wish he would take me away" (1218). John's not listening to the narrator is an ideal characteristic of an evil villain. The real reason why she was sick was because something inside her wanted to get out. The evil villain husband appears to be holding our hero hostage, not letting her trapped soul escape.
The narrator gives eerie descriptions of the yellow wallpaper; she was obsessed with it. She started to see things in the wallpaper that others did not see. “Behind the outside pattern the dim shapes get clearer every day. It is always the same shape, only very numerous. And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don't like it a bit. I wonder - I begin to think - I wish John would take me away from here!”
The room Jane spends most of her time in solitary has yellow wallpaper which upon arrival she noticed and spoke of how awful it was. She wanted John to have it re-done but he decided that would not be a good idea for then she would just find something else she didn’t like (436-437). She becomes fixated on the wallpaper and describes the color and pattern in it.
Prior to this, she expresses, “I’m feeling ever so much better! I don’t sleep much at night, for it is so interesting to watch developments” (478). This statement conveys, that she has lost her senses from the outside world and lives completely in her own imagination. She has become so obsessive of the wallpaper now, that she does not want anybody else touching it. She too, does not want John to find out about her obsession because she’s afraid he’ll take her away at once; she does not wish to leave until she has figured out the pattern. On the last day of her stay, once she has ripped off as much wallpaper as she can, she admits, “I don’t like to look out of the windows even—there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast. I wonder if they all come out of the wallpaper as I did” (482). Here, Gilman uncovers, that “the woman” and the narrator are in fact the same woman. The narrator identifies that she is the trapped woman. The “woman” she had envisioned trapped behind the wallpaper, was her all along trying to escape from depression. During the last event of the story, she says, “I kept on creeping just the same, but I looked at him over my shoulder. ‘I’ve got out at last’ said I ‘in spite of you and Jane. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back!’” (482). She has freed herself at
This could be because they are the rebellious part of the family who does not agree with the treatments dealt out to Jane. If not why did John say to her “he would as soon put fireworks in my pillow-case as to have those stimulating people about now.” (649). He sees that part of the family as a negative influence that makes his wife sicker.
She secretly stays awake at night and goes to sleep during the day. Giving the image to John she is resting like he has ordered. This is also a great place of irony the author wrote. The more the narrator obsesses about the wallpaper, the deeper and deeper she falls into insanity. But her husband is happy she is getting plenty of rest during the day. He has no idea how insane his wife is becoming. The narrator has begun to see shadows of women in the pattern of the wallpaper. Women sneaking around trying to escape the wallpaper. The pattern resembles bars of a cage to the narrator. She begins to tear down the wallpaper. As she tears at the paper she see many heads. Heads of women being strangled as they try to escape the pattern. The wallpaper becomes a symbol of women trapped in domestic life, of family and tradition. In the end, the narrator reveals how much sacrifice women and herself have done breaking the chains man have placed on them. In her final speech to her husband, the readers get the sense of how much she has sacrificed. She says, "I've got out at last, in spite of you and Jane! And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" She is free! Free from the constraints of marriage, of society and her own
The narrator and her husband moves into an old ancestral hall for the summer, however, she immediately senses an odd feeling about the place. John scoffs at her superstitions and uses his position as a doctor to dissipate anymore thoughts of the sort. Gilman writes, “John is a physician, and perhaps—(I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind–) perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster"(Gilman 16). Gilman has cleverly taken the reader into the innermost realms of a woman’s mind and experiences, yet the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper remains anonymous, a reflection of her status in society. The role of narration plays a very important role in developing the pathway the story is told. John is part of a patriarchal old-school ideology that relegated women 's feelings to irrelevant hysterics. John would have attributed his wife 's problems to "women issues" and stress. Her ultimate craziness would have been attributed to forces outside his control as a male. Gilman also highlights the importance of first-person narration by dealing with ethos. The narrator of “The Yellow Wall-Paper" appears credible as the story opens, but as her mental state deteriorates, so does her credibility. In the beginning, she writes
The narrator claimed that there was a woman trapped by bars in the wallpaper. It is like a prison that she is stuck in and coincides with the narrator as she is also forced to sit inside a room alone. It is also symbolic of John and his wife’s relationship. As the narrator looks deeper and deeper into the wallpaper she is really just observing her life. The yellow wallpaper really changes the narrator and her mind and she begins to dislike John. The narrator is dealing with postpartum depression and many people that are depressed are usually stuck inside their own minds. It’s like your vision is just a window you can see out of, but cannot escape. The narrator is seeing herself in the wallpaper and trying to escape because she is also trying to escape her depression. Close to the end of the story John’s wife starts to rip apart the yellow wallpaper and when she is ripping it is like she is helping the woman inside the wallpaper which is really her, to
She, as the narrator, starts off with revealing that she is very open to how she see’s things. Her description of this summer vacation leads to the recollection of herself remembering her nightmares growing up, and she insists the house they are staying at this time is haunted, “I use to lie awake as a child and get more entertainment and terror out of blank walls and plain furniture than most children could find in a toy-store.” (Gilman 650) She can’t rely on John so she turns to writing instead, causing her to be secretive instead of confiding in what is supposed to be her life partner. She then proceeds with the growing mystery of this “yellow wallpaper”. With john’s notorious attitude towards her about this infatuation, “He said that I was letting it get the better of me, and that nothing was worse for a nervous patient than to give way to such fancies” (Gilman 649), her character played like she was not interested anymore only to satisfy her husband’s demands when really she is still persistent on the issue. She begins to be devious around John, causing climax in the end with the realization that it is herself that she helped “escape” from behind the bar designs within the wall, “I wonder if they all come out of that wallpaper as I did?” (Gilman 656). With that being said, the author illiterates that the use of control on this woman not only drove her to madness but was produced by being in such
Though The Yellow Wallpaper is a fiction, it was based on Gilman's own experience after being diagnosed as a hysteric and prescribed a rest cure which prohibited her writing. However, The Yellow Wallpaper is more than a case study in mental illness or a horror story, it is a story of a dominant/submissive relationship between husband and wife. John, the narrator's husband, never takes her seriously. At the very beginning of the story she says " John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage." Anytime the narrator would make a suggestion for her recovery, John would give her a " stern reproachful look." Although the narrator feels desperate, John tells her that there is no reason for how she feels. He treats her like a child and makes her doubt herself. John is the man of the house and he expects the narrator to trust him completely, just as small children trust in their parents. The narrator often speaks in a manner that suggests that she cannot disagree with anything her husband says. She is a typical nineteenth century submissive wife and her "What is one to do?" means that she has no authority and no control over her life. The idea of resting is not something she likes, she would rather work, but she has no choice. Still, she manages to disobey her husband and write her journal without him knowing it. There are many other evidences of dominant-submissive relationship, and one of the most convincing is when John says, " I beg of you, for my sake and our child's sake, as well as for your own" By placing himself and the baby first he is unintentionally saying that she is not important enough.