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Symbolism employed in the short story the yellow wallpaper
Feminist approach to the yellow wallpaper
The feminism of the yellow wallpaper
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For centuries women in literature have been depicted as weak, subservient, and unthinking characters. Before the 19th century, they usually were not given interesting personalities and were always the proper, perfect and supportive character to the main manly characters. However, one person, in order to defy and mock the norm of woman characterization and the demeaning mindsets about women, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper." This story, through well crafted symbolisms, brought to surface the troubles that real women face. Her character deals with the feeling of being trapped by the expectations of her husband, with the need to do something creative or constructive, and to have a mind and will of her own. These feelings are represented through various symbols in the story which include the wallpaper, the woman in the wallpaper, the mental sickness that progressed throughout the story, male presence/influence, moonlight/daylight, and the crazy pattern on the wallpaper.
The wallpaper in Gilman's story represents the unnamed narrator's repressed and trapped self. The side that is not liberated by insanity. It represents everything that she detests about her life; not being allowed to write, having to be a mother, and needing to be someone who John expects her to be. In this way, her immediate hatred of the wallpaper is fitting. The old saying that says a person always hates others for the things they hate about themselves applies to her hatred of the wallpaper. The yellowness of the wallpaper reminds her of her sickness because yellow is the color of jaundice and generally symbolizes inferiority, strangeness, cowardice, ugliness, and backwardness. Therefore, because she sees these things in herself, she hates t...
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The narrator's world is a world where men control everything she does. She cannot go as she pleases or be the creative person she is and wants to be, so she does it in secret and eventually drives herself insane. All of the symbolisms in her story combine together to enforce the idea of a duality of the narrator's life. She is forced to be two people because of the pressures of society. They emphasize the idea and major point of Gilman's story that women need to be able to be themselves and express themselves and have rights and their own lives. I would categorize this story as an existential in nature because it was up to the narrator to decide to do the things she did. She could have forced herself to stop looking at the wallpaper and ignored her fantasies but she wanted to be her own person and therefore decided to let herself go insane.
..., Gilman acknowledges the fact that much work is needed to overcome the years of injustice. Through the concluding scenes where the narrator goes into her mental illness rebellion, Gilman encourages women to do what they can to stand up for themselves.
Upon first reading Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper", it appears to be consecutive journal entries written by a flighty woman-plagued with bouts of depression-about her stay at a vacation home. Though upon closer inspection, the double entendre of this cleverly written story reveals itself.
...chniques that Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses in "The Yellow Wallpaper" to suggest that a type of loneliness (in women) caused by imprisoning oppression can lead to the deadliest form of insanity. By using setting, Gilman shows how the barred windows intensifies the young woman's imprisoning oppression, the isolated summer home represents the loneliness the young woman feels, and her hallucinations of the wallpaper pattern indicates her transition to insanity. Wallpaper symbolism is used throughout the story the pattern representing the strangling nature of the imprisoning oppression, the fading yellow color showing the fading away of the young woman, and the hovering smell representing the deadly insanity to which she succumbs. Like the darkness that quickly consumes, the imprisoning loneliness of oppression swallows its victim down into the abyss of insanity.
Symbolism plays a major role in The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Several symbols are used to show the oppression of women by men as well as the struggle against that male dominated society. While there are a plethera of symbols that could be cited from the text to support this, there are a few especially important symbols throughout the story that lend support to the woman's suffrage theme. The wallpaper itself is symbolic of the mental barrier that men attempted to place on women during the 1800s. The color yellow is often associated with illness or weakness, and the writer's mysterious sickness is a symbol of man's oppression of the female sex.
Societal control of the accepted terms by which a woman can operate and live in lends itself to the ultimate subjugation of women, especially in regards to her self-expression and dissent. Gilman does an extraordinary job of effectively communicating and transforming this apparent truth into an eerie tale of one woman’s gradual spiral towards the depths of madness. This descent, however, is marked with the undertones of opportunity. On one hand, the narrator has lost all hope. On the other, she has found freedom in losing all hope. This subversion of the patriarchal paradigm is tactfully juxtaposed against a backdrop of the trappings of insanity.
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.
After analyzing Charlotte Perkins Gilman's, "The Yellow Wallpaper", from a feminist perspective it is undoubtedly shown to challenge patriarchal ideals through the stories heavy amounts of symbolism. The story revolves around the thoughts of a woman suffering from hysteria who ultimately loses her sanity due to her interactions with the isolated environment and husband, John. The story does a clear job at showing the oppressions of women in the late nineteenth century through the narrator's conversations with John, the ideas she has written down and in her head, the room in which she is caged in and finally the reflection of the Gilman's life in this story.
“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
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.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman uses symbolism to add to the mood of her short story. While being treated for depression by rest cure, the narrator is stuck in a room covered in horrible yellow wallpaper that she claims is revolting, “The color is repellent, almost revolting: a smoldering unclean yellow strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others.” (Gilman 298). Her view on this wallpaper symbolizes that she is not an optimistic thinker and also immediately shows the reader that she is not emotionally stable, as she is obsessing over a simple color. This also begins to set an ominous and eerie mood to the short story. Secondly, as the story progresses she begins to see things in the
The author describes the wallpaper as a disturbing and unsettling sight. It often makes the narrator uncomfortable, while using personification the yellow wall is brought to life and the narrator explains it as if the wallpaper were a person in the room along with her. The narrator describes the wallpaper as “poor thing” and that there is a woman inside of the wall that “shakes the pattern”(Gilman 655). As the story develops the real meaning of the woman beyond the wallpaper becomes more clear. The wallpaper is illustrated as if it were none other but the narrator herself. The poor wallpaper and the woman the shakes the pattern attempting to set herself free. Almost as if the wallpaper were her ‘poor’ illness and she is shaking the expectations set upon her by John, attempting to be free. She also begins to talk about how when the woman gets out of the wallpaper when no one is around, she creeps throughout the room and the outside, not wanting to be found or seen. The narrator’s true self creeping around when John isn’t around, attempting not to be seen or found, afraid of the possibility of getting sent away. Finally as the story progresses the true meaning of the wall paper and the woman beyond it begin to become even more visible. She speaks about the wallpaper saying “it slaps you in the face, knocks you
... "The Yellow Wallpaper" is not simply a story of a woman whose imagination drives her insane, it is a symbolic story of the woman writer who wishes to free herself from the conventions of the male dominated literary world. Gilman's proposes that women can achieve such status that they deserve, but that they must first acknowledge and see truthfully the "madness" surroundings, the tenets created by men, and become driven by the "madness" to overcome it. It is not impossible, but an uphill battle won by many others. Charlotte Perkins Gilman is proof of this: her work is wholly a part of the literary canon, among the best of her male peers.
In literature, women are often depicted as weak, compliant, and inferior to men. The nineteenth century was a time period where women were repressed and controlled by their husband and other male figures. Charlotte Gilman, wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper," showing her disagreement with the limitations that society placed on women during the nineteenth century. According to Edsitement, the story is based on an event in Gilman’s life. Gilman suffered from depression, and she went to see a physician name, Silas Weir Mitchell. He prescribed the rest cure, which then drove her into insanity. She then rebelled against his advice, and moved to California to continue writing. She then wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which is inflated version of her experience. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," the main character is going through depression and she is being oppressed by her husband and she represents the oppression that many women in society face. Gilman illustrates this effect through the use of symbols such as the yellow wallpaper, the nursery room, and the barred windows.
Gilman’s work draws forth, through experience some of the struggles women faced daily and demonstrates the battle for women’s free will. To entirely understand Gilman’s work one needs to know what feminism truly is, that it is about “...not only exposing but, more importantly, with electrifying myriad forms of women's oppression.” (Jean) Feminism has no secret agenda, it is meant to educate people on the struggles that many women face day-to-day at the hands of men. Gilman’s story demonstrates this element by having her main character subject to her husband's wishes no matter what. As the story progresses the reader sees the woman slowly lose her sanity but continuously obey her husband's orders to stay at the house. One gets a look into the troubled mind of a controlled woman; the desire to do something but a voice that tells them no, until they can no longer take it and causes them to go crazy. Their thirst for freedom caused them to do whatever they can to gain some form of control.
Charlotte Gilman like her character, Jane, had postpartum depression after having her first child. In her short story it reflects off of how her real experience with Dr. S. Weir Mitchell and the resting cure effects Jane’s husband’s beliefs. By using the first person point-of-view we can see Jane’s steady decline into insanity after being cut-off from the outside world and how the yellow wallpaper becomes her fixation. Jane’s husband John is a physician in the early 20th century who avidly believes in the resting cure is the one who makes her believe that this treatment will work, since she is a woman her requests for going to see family or to leave the room are quickly set aside and ignored.