The yellow wallpaper is about a couple who has an unequal relationship. The husband is a doctor, and the wife is suffering from severe mental illness. The husband rents out a mansion in the countryside symbolizing as an asylum. She was kept in the attic of the mansion in a strange room cover in yellow wallpaper. There are four windows facing toward every direction, but all four windows are barred. The wife grows more insane looking at the wallpaper. The wallpaper has a strange, formless pattern, and Gilman (1892) describes it as “revolting” and behind the pattern of the wallpaper she thinks that she see women who are trying to escape. On the last day at the mansion, the wife locks the door and refuses to leave disobeying her husband. When the …show more content…
husband opens the door, he faints, and she emblematically steps over his body to her freedom. The wife reveals that she does not want to be behind the wallpaper, but she was one of the women behind the wallpaper. The yellow wallpaper is impressive short stories using the genre of horror to make the reader understand the darkness and emotional disorder of the central character. This story is about the progression into madness, and the author use madness as a theme in the story very well. This theme is a declaration of a human condition from the wife. Gilman’s (1892) in the “The yellow wallpaper”: “I always fancy I see people walking in these numerous paths and arbors, but John has cautioned me not to give way to fancy in the least. He says that with my imaginative power and habit of story-making, a nervous weakness like mine is sure to lead to all manner of excited fancies, and that I ought to use my will and good sense to check the tendency. So I try. I sometimes think that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press of ideas and rest me.” (P. 649) John makings the main character limits her imaginative power, but her writing and story-making might be a healthy outlet for her mental illness. This story takes place in the 1800’s during the women rights movement. Women did not have the right to vote and couldn’t make enough money to support themselves, so many women felt trap and isolated. The husband represents authority and science that often terminate the ideas of freedom and imagination the wife has to offer. This drives the main character to more insanity because she feels like she trap in a box from the male-centered society. The author uses other themes within the story such as freedom and imprisonment. Gilman (1892) “He said that after the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and then that gate at the head of the stairs, and so on” (P.649). Being treated in a mansion attic with barred windows and a gate that blocks the stairwell are objects that provides a physical imprisonment that mirror the main character. Each theme has depth, and the writer has a strong feeling about certain things. The title of the story “The yellow wallpaper” is the primary symbol, a figure of speech where an object has another meaning other than its literal sense.
The action of the main character makes it a deeper meaning in the context of the entire story. Gilman (1892) “The color is repellant, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.” (P.649). Yellow is a term in the story because the color has meanings that its represents. On an art website callled The Color Matter, J.L. Morton defines yellow is “the color of happiness, and optimism, of enlightenment and creativity, sunshine and spring” (para. 2). However when the color is faded the meaning is changed. J.L. Morton “Lurking in the background is the dark side of yellow: cowardice, betrayal, egoism, and madness. Furthermore, yellow is the color of caution and physical illness.” (para. 3). Her mood changes between daytime and nighttime Gilman (1892) “At night in any kind of light, in twilight, candlelight, lamplight and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars!” (P.653). The yellow wallpaper becomes faded during the night, her hate toward the wallpaper was increased. The author display symbolism splendidly, it enhances the story even more and take the theme of a story represent it …show more content…
physically. The Yellow Wallpaper was written as a fiction realism story.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the author of this story, wrote an article called “Why I wrote the yellow wallpaper.” Gilman provides some background information about her life. Gilman (1913) “For many years I suffered from a severe and continuous nervous breakdown tending to melancholia--and beyond.” Melancholia is “a mental condition and especially a manic-depressive condition characterized by extreme depression, bodily complaints, and often hallucinations and delusions” in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary (“Melancholia”2015). Gilman was put into care from a noted specialist. She was placed on a rest cure treatment Gilman (1913) “solemn advice to “live as domestic a life as far as possible," to "have but two hours' intellectual life a day," and "never to touch pen, brush, or pencil again" as long as I lived.” So the specialist restrict Gilman intellectual activities and creative outlets, but this leads her to mental ruin. Gilman (1913) “I cast the noted specialist's advice to the winds and went to work again--work, the normal life of every human being; work, in which is joy and growth and service” Gilman found work and freedom from her depression. She wrote this story with Gilman (1913) “embellishments and additions, to carry out the ideal.” The story between the author and main character may be similar, but the reader should read the story as a work of literature not as an autobiography. Gilman develops her story by
adding ideas to make a transition between reality and fiction. Gilman (1913) “But the best result is this. Many years later I was told that the great specialist had admitted to friends of his that he had altered his treatment of neurasthenia since reading The Yellow Wallpaper. It was not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked.” This book has made an influence on society with the views on feminism. The author displays the power of fiction that help people see a thing in there our lives and to advert dreadful faith. A writer that can make things happen in the reader’s mind vividly is talent, making this story an excellent read.
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story about a woman’s gradual descent into insanity, after the birth of her child. The story was written in 1892 after the author herself suffered from a nervous breakdown, soon after the birth of her daughter in 1885. Gilman did spend a month in a sanitarium with the urging of her physician husband. "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a story about herself, during the timeframe of when Gilman was in the asylum.
The Yellow Wallpaper is a very unique and odd story. In the first read through of the story, the reader is aware that the narrator is sick and losing her mind. Over the course of the story it becomes apparent that the treatment used to heal the narrator isn’t effective. As she begins to completely lose her mind the reader gets a glimpse into her mind. She believes that she is trapped inside of the wallpaper, and by ripping it off the wall she can escape. There are several topics that seem to occur in this story. These topics include Feminism, the role of women in the 1880’s period, and knowledge and understanding of mentally ill. Although these are some of the main points in the story, The Yellow Wallpaper has several topics that are direct
The short story “Yellow Wallpaper, “written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1892, narrates the story in the first person through parts, as if they were entered as a memoir. She is a woman who is going through a type of paranoiac post-partum depression, after the birth of her child. It can also be observed also a type of bipolar disorder in her. The impact of the classic The “Yellow Wallpaper” is huge, the shock of its truth is unpredictable. Gilman’s suffering suffocates everyone around her. She is locked up in a bedroom, as she describes in one of the passages that she writes, seeing “barred windows for children” and “rings and things on the wall.” Clearly it can be seen
"The Yellow Wallpaper," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts a woman in isolation, struggling to cope with mental illness, which has been diagnosed by her husband, a physician. Going beyond this surface level, the reader sees the narrator as a developing feminist, struggling with the societal values of the time. As a woman writer in the late nineteenth century, Gilman herself felt the adverse effects of the male-centric society, and consequently, placed many allusions to her own personal struggles as a feminist in her writing. Throughout the story, the narrator undergoes a psychological journey that correlates with the advancement of her mental condition. The restrictions which society places on her as a woman have a worsening effect on her until illness progresses into hysteria. 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.
1. The Yellow Wallpaper: The wallpaper is, as the title suggests, the chief symbol in this story. What does it symbolize, and how does it work as a symbol? What details about the wallpaper seem significant? How does the narrator 's attitude toward and vision of the wallpaper change, and what is the significance of those changes?
On my first reading of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper", I found the short story extremely well done and the author, successful at getting her idea across. Gilman's use of imagery and symbolism only adds to the reality of the nameless main character's sheltered life and slow progression into insanity or some might say, out of insanity.
Although both protagonists in the stories go through a psychological disorder that turns their lives upside down, they find ways to feel content once again. In Charlotte Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper," a nervous wife, an overprotective husband, and a large, damp room covered in musty wallpaper all play important roles in driving the wife insane. Gilman's masterful use of not only the setting, both time and place, but also of first person point of view, allows the reader to process the woman's growing insanity. The narrator develops a very intimate relationship with the yellow wallpaper throughout the story, as it is her constant companion. Her initial reaction to it is a feeling of hatred; she dislikes the color and despises the pattern, but does not attribute anything peculiar to it. Two weeks into their stay she begins to project a sort of personality onto the paper, so she studies the pattern more closely, noticing for the first time “a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design” (Gilman). At this point, her madness is vague, but becoming more defined, because although the figure that she sees behind the pattern has no solid shape, she dwells on it and
Charlotte Gilman was a renowned feminist author who published most of her work in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. Her works, of which "The Yellow Wallpaper" is most famous, reflect her feminist views. Gilman used her writings as a way of expressing these views to the public. At the time "The Yellow Wallpaper" was written, the attitude in colonial America towards feminists was not one of tolerance or acceptance. In the mid-1880s, Gilman suffered a nervous breakdown and eventually was referred to a specialist in neurological disorders. The doctor's diagnosis was such: Gilman was perfectly healthy. The doctor ordered Gilman to domesticate her life and to immediately stop her writings. Gilman went by the doctor's orders, and nearly went mad. Now although "Yellow Wallpaper" is a fictional story, it becomes clear that the story was significantly influenced by Gilman's life experiences. Gilman seems to be exploring the depths of mental illness through her writing.
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.
Yellow has classically been used to symbolize sunshine, the brightness of the day, wealth, and happiness. However, in Gilman 's short story, the colour is utilized to illustrate darker ideals. Gilman illustrates a distinct air of both discomfort and disgust towards the colour itself in the beginning as the narrator uses heavy adjectives to describe the awful shades, words such as “smouldering unclean yellow”(Gilman, 191), “sickly sulphur”(191), and “lurid orange(191)”. These words conjure the picture and further the meaning of the colour to represent sickness in The Yellow Wallpaper. Yellow itself is used to represent the pestilence, and the grim suffering of the narrator due to mental illness. This is furthered as Gilman allows the narrator to delve in deeper, to compare the sickly shade of yellow to the narrator’s previous experiences by stating, “it is the strangest yellow, that wallpaper! It makes me think of all the yellow things I ever saw - not beautiful ones like buttercups, but old foul. bad yellow things.” (197). Gilman expedites the idea of yellow as a symbol for the darkness of disease as the narrator begins to feel more comfortable with the colour as evidenced in her choice of words. These effects are illustrated as the narrator begins to document a smell that occurs around the home which Beverly A Hume builds on, stating
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 Yellow Wallpaper is a popular book when discussing psychology in the late nineteenth century. The author, Charlotte Gilman, wrote her experience of mental illness through her narrator. Gilman suffered with depression after giving birth and she never fully recovered from it. (Gilman 95). The narrator is depicted as a woman who has been diagnosed with what was called a nervous disorder. Her husband, a psychologist, gave her several different tonics and other substances that are supposed to make her better. She was also put on bed rest meaning that she was not able to work or do anything that would tire her out. She is told to go and rest several times during the story and it is evident that her ‘psychosis’ gets worse when she is forced to stay in her room and rest for the majority of her days and all night. She begins to see women in the pattern of her wallpaper and she becomes obsessed with it. The narrator becomes very protective of her wallpaper and gets almost jealous when she sees her sister-in-law looking at it and touching it. She even says “no person touches this pa...
There is far more meanings behind the yellow wallpaper than just its own color. The pattern plays an immense role in causing the woman to become so entranced and obsessed with the wallpaper, as well as the source of her ever diminishing mental health. Gilman narrates, “I never saw a worse [wall] paper in my life. One of those sprawling flamboyant patterns
The Yellow Wallpaper is overflowed with symbolism. Symbols are images that have a meaning beyond them selves in a short story, a symbol is a detail, a character, or an incident that has a meaning beyond its literal role in the narrative. Gilman uses symbols to tell her story of a woman's mental state of being diminishes throughout the story. The following paragraphs tell just some of the symbols and how I interpreted them, they could be read in many different ways.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper in 1890 about her experience in a psychiatric hospital. The doctor she had prescribed her “the rest cure” to get over her condition (Beekman). Gilman included the name of the sanitarium she stayed at in the piece as well which was named after the doctor that “treated” her. The short story was a more exaggerated version of her month long stay at Weir Mitchell and is about a woman whose name is never revealed and she slowly goes insane under the watch of her doctor husband and his sister (The Yellow Wallpaper 745). Many elements of fiction were utilized by Gilman in this piece to emphasize the theme freedom and confinement. Three of the most important elements are symbolism, setting and character.