In the short story “The Yellow Paper”, Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells the story through the first person point of view where the story is told by the narrator only. The story takes place around the 80s-90s century where the narrator and her husband stay in a mansion for her rescue. The narrator is predicted to be suffering from temporary nervous depression by her husband, brother, and Weir Mitchell. Throughout the story, the readers could easily see many images that imply to the sexist reality back in time and how women are put under the pressure of the unequal society with the stereotype that they are always the supporters rather than the main financial provider for the family. Gilman introduces a new fictional theme to the audience back in …show more content…
In a short story, symbolism refers to a word, person, object, or image that evokes a range of additional meanings that are usually more abstract than its literal significance. In this story, through the yellow wallpaper, Gilman portrays the narrator’s powerlessness to do what she wants. The narrator couldn’t change the wallpaper because it would lead other things to be changed, or just simply that John “would not hear of it” (Gilman 76,78). It is easy to understand that the narrator couldn’t change the wallpaper by herself since John is the man of the house. He holds all the finance and power when it comes to decision making, at least for now when the narrator is sick. The narrator is also “forbidden” to write ,which is how she releases her stress, due to John’s restrictions. John is the man of the house and also the doctor of the narrator, thus, he has the power and control over the narrator’s action. Therefore, the narrator is powerless to do what she wants. Another reason behind the narrator’s powerlessness could also be because she doesn’t want to disobey John who provides and takes care of her for almost everything (Gilman 77). The narrator acts like how the society expects her to which is listening and following the husband’s words. It is thus, the yellow wallpaper is not only represented the narrator’s powerlessness but the female limited power under the …show more content…
The style is often understood as the distinctive and recognizable way an author uses language to create a work of literature. In this story, the readers could easily see the diction is used by both the narrator and the characters showing how social norm affect their behavior and action. In a literary work, diction often refers to the writer choice of language, including words, phrases, and sentence structure. In the story, the readers witness how John repeatedly calls the narrator a “little girl or darling”; John addresses the narrator as something powerless and nonharmful, though she is an adult (Gilman 82,83). Even though John loves the narrator; he unconsciously treats her like an object just like other men in the society. John does what he thinks is right for the narrator regardless of her opinions. John treats his woman just like how society expects him to. He makes all the decision for her life which is emphasized by how undoubtedly he agrees with the narrator’s brother and Weir Mitchell regard of the narrator’s sickness (Gilman 80,81,82). Therefore, out of all the love John has for the narrator, he unconsciously sees the narrator as an object that he has to take care of where he feels “much easier” about the narrator when she eats and sleeps like he wants her too (Gilman 81). In the sexist society, most women are expected to please and worship
The story "The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story about control. In the time frame in which the story was written, the 1800’s, women were looked upon as having no effect on society other than bearing children, maintaining a clean house, and food on the table etc. etc. There was really no means for self expression as a woman, when men not only dominated society but the world. The story was written at a time when men held the jobs, knowledge, and society above their shoulders. The narrator on, "The Yellow Wallpaper" in being oppressed by her husband, John, even though many readers believe this story is about a woman who loses her mind, it is actually about a woman’s struggle to regain, something which she never had before, control of her life.
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.
“There are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will. Behind that 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 late 19th century hosted a hardship for women in our society. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman expressed a form of patriarchy within the story. Gilman never addressed the woman in the “The Yellow Wallpaper” by a name, demonstrating her deficiency of individual identity. The author crafted for the narrator to hold an insignificant role in civilization and to live by the direction of man. Representing a hierarchy between men and women in the 19th century, the wallpaper submerged the concentration of the woman and began compelling her into a more profound insanity.
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.
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.
In the 19th century, women were not seen in society as being an equal to men. Men were responsible for providing and taking care of the family while their wives stayed at home not allowed leaving without their husbands. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes about a woman named Jane who is trapped by society’s cage and tries to find herself. Throughout the story, the theme of self-discovery is developed through the symbols of the nursery, the journal and the wallpaper.
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.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” contains many symbols in which Charlotte Perkins Gilman develops the idea that society at the time of the story presumed certain things “proper” - without knowing that they were indeed harmful. In the 19th century, women had no power, worth, or opportunities, and that could have been enough to drive woman of the time, including the narrator, into madness. Women were involved in the workforce, could not vote, or have a voice in anything. Charlotte Perkins Gilman wanted to change the way in which women were viewed in the 19th century. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, she uses numerous symbols to show the many restrictions upon women, lack of public interaction, and the struggle for equality.
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.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins-Gilman explores the oppression of women in the nineteenth century and the constant limitation of their freedom, which many times led to their confinement. The short story illustrates male superiority and the restriction of a woman’s choice regarding her own life. The author’s diction created a horrific and creepy tone to illustrate the supernatural elements that serve as metaphors to disguise the true meaning of the story. Through the use of imagery, the reader can see that the narrator is living within a social class, so even though the author is trying to create a universal voice for all women that have been similar situations, it is not possible. This is not possible because there are many
Symbolism is the use of a person, place, or thing to represent an idea or quality. In the story The Yellow Wallpaper is filled with symbolism the pattern of the wallpaper, the moonlight, and the house. The pattern of the yellow wallpaper can be seen as a cage. This can be why the narrator feels like she is trapped inside the wallpaper. The moonlight can symbolize the narrator because during the day she remains motionless due to her husband watching her and at night she creeps through the room and remains alert and awake. “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by...
The yellow wallpaper itself is one of the largest symbols in the story. It can be interpreted to symbolize many things about the narrator. The wallpaper symbolizes the mental block mean attempted to place on women during the 1800s. The color yellow is often associated with sickness or weakness, and the narrator’s mysterious illness is an example of the male oppression on the narrator. The wallpaper in fact makes the narrator more “sick” as the story progresses. The yellow wallpaper, of which the writer declares, “I never saw a worse paper in my life,” is a symbol of the mental screen that men attempted to enforce upon women. Gilman writes, “The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing” this is a symbolic metaphor for restrictions placed on women. The author is saying subliminally that the denial of equality for women by men is a “hideous” act, and that when men do seem to grant women some measure of that equality, it is often “unreliable.” The use of the words “infuriating” and “torturing” are also descriptions of the feelings of women in 19th century society.
The short story titled, “The Yellow Wallpaper” is given its name for no other reason than the disturbing yellow wallpaper that the narrator comes to hate so much; it also plays as a significant symbol in the story. The wallpaper itself can represent many various ideas and circumstances, and among them, the sense of feeling trapped, the impulse of creativity gone awry, and what was supposed to be a simple distraction transfigures into an unhealthy obsession. By examining the continuous references to the yellow wallpaper itself, one can begin to notice how their frequency develops the plot throughout the course of the story. As well as giving the reader an understanding as to why the wallpaper is a more adequate and appropriate symbol to represent the lady’s confinement and the deterioration of her mental and emotional health. In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the color of the wallpaper symbolizes the internal and external conflicts of the narrator that reflect the expectations and treatment of the narrator, as well as represent the sense of being controlled in addition to the feeling of being trapped.
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
The Yellow Paper is a short story published in 1892, and written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Charlotte tells of a disheartening tale of a woman who struggles to free herself from postpartum depression. The Yellow Paper gives an account of an emotionally and intellectual deteriorated woman struggles to break free from a mental prison her husband had put her into, in order to find peace. The woman lived in a male dominated society and wanted indictment from it as she had been driven crazy, because of the Victorian “rest-cure” (Gilman 45). Her husband decided to force her to have a strict bed rest by separating her from her only child. He took her to recuperate in an isolated country estate all alone. The bed rest her husband forced into made her mental state develop from bad to worst. The Yellow Paper is a story that warns the readers about the consequences of fixed gender roles in a male-dominated world. In The Yellow Paper, a woman’s role was to be a dutiful wife and she should not question her husband’s authority and even whereabouts. Whereas, a man’s role was to be a husband, main decision maker, rational thinker and his authority was not to be questioned by the wife.