Have you ever been trapped inside your own mind? Unable to choose to fight the thoughts or to give up? Whether it’s a minor or major thing, we have all been there. It is very hard to fight, especially when you are alone and someone else is putting pressure on you or is the cause for the entrapment. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman the narrator is a woman who is denied freedom by her husband, John, due to postpartum depression. The husband believes that limiting her freedom will allow her to heal faster. The narrator’s husband keeps her in a big nursery, with barred windows, a bed bolted to the floor with ugly, faded, unclean and torn yellow wallpaper. She is newlywed and mother, she is unable to see her newborn because …show more content…
For example, when they recently moved in to the summer home they are staying at throughout the story, she suggested to her husband what room she’d like, she said “I don't like our room a bit. I wanted one downstairs that opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window, and such pretty old-fashioned chintz hangings! but John would not hear of it.” The narrator knows what she wants but she doesn’t want to tell her husband because she knows he will not understand because he thinks that isolation is what’s best for her condition but it is what is making her worse. She is now stuck in the nursery, taking medication every hour of the day, unable to see her own child and even unable to write in her personal journal although it is what makes her feel better. The narrator is unable to break free from her husband, she has gotten used to the fact that whatever her husband says must be right therefore, now she is not able to express herself. In conclusion, in The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman shows us how oppression can affect someone. When women are in such situations it can lead to depression just like in the story. The story is told in the first person which allows you to get into character, you can see the frustrating from the character’s
The narrator is trying to get better from her illness but her husband “He laughs at me so about this wallpaper” (515). He puts her down and her insecurities do not make it any better. She is treated like a child. John says to his wife “What is it little girl” (518)? Since he is taking care of her she must obey him “There comes John, and I must put this away, he hates to have me write a word”. The narrator thinks John is the reason why she cannot get better because he wants her to stay in a room instead of communicating with the world and working outside the house.
To initiate on the theme of control I will proceed to speak about the narrators husband, who has complete control over her. Her husband John has told her time and time again that she is sick; this can be viewed as control for she cannot tell him otherwise for he is a physician and he knows better, as does the narrator’s brother who is also a physician. At the beginning of the story she can be viewed as an obedient child taking orders from a professor, and whatever these male doctors say is true. The narrator goes on to say, “personally, I disagree with their ideas” (557), that goes without saying that she is not very accepting of their diagnosis yet has no option to overturn her “treatment” the bed rest and isolation. Another example of her husband’s control would be the choice in room in which she must stay in. Her opinion is about the room she stays in is of no value. She is forced to stay in a room she feels uneasy about, but John has trapped her in this particular room, where the windows have bars and the bed is bolted to the floor, and of course the dreadful wall paper, “I never worse paper in my life.” (558) she says. Although she wishes to switch rooms and be in one of the downstairs rooms one that, “opened on the piazza and had roses all over the window. ...” (558). However, she knows that, “John would not hear of it.”(558) to change the rooms.
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.
differently. "John is a physician, and perhaps- (I would not say it to a living
The Yellow Wallpaper, Written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is comprised as an assortment of journal entries written in first person, by a woman who has been confined to a room by her physician husband who he believes suffers a temporary nervous depression, when she is actually suffering from postpartum depression. He prescribes her a “rest cure”. The woman remains anonymous throughout the story. She becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper that surrounds her in the room, and engages in some outrageous imaginations towards the wallpaper. Gilman’s story depicts women’s struggle of independence and individuality at the rise of feminism, as well as a reflection of her own life and experiences.
There are multiple possible causes for the internal conflict the narrator faces. The first being nervous depression and the other is the fact that her life is being controlled by her husband. Her husband is in full control because in the beginning of the story, John, her husband, influences how she should act. He decides the actions that should be taken in regards to her health and sanctity. Although she finds herself disagreeing with his synopsis, she is confined and does not admit how she feels to him. This also brings about another a major conflict that occurred in the 19th century, men being dominant and woman being categorized as inferior. Evidence can be found when the narrator states, “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband assures friends and relatives that there is nothing the matter with o...
Even though her husband treats her with what seem at first as love, it becomes clear she is nothing more to him than a piece of property. Every time he talks to her, he asks her to get better for his sake and the children's, and only after mentions hers interests. He doesn't think that she has any normal human feelings or worries and attributes her behavior to minor nervous depression. He doesn't see her true suffering since he believes "there is no reason to suffer" (574). He could never understand that a woman can be unsatisfied with the role imposed on her by society. Even though the heroine recognizes that her condition is caused by something other than John's theory, she is too scared to voice her opinion.
Have you ever been locked in a dark closet? You grope about trying to feel the doorknob, straining to see a thin beam of light coming from underneath the door. As the darkness consumes you, you feel as if you will suffocate. There is a sensation of helplessness and hopelessness. Loneliness, caused by oppression, is like the same darkness that overtakes its victim. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in "The Yellow Wallpaper," recounts the story of a young mother who travels to a summer home to "rest" from her nervous condition. Her bedroom is an old nursery covered with ugly, yellow wallpaper. The more time she spends alone, the more she becomes obsessed with the wallpaper's patterns. She begins to imagine a woman behind bars in the paper. Finally, she loses her sanity and believes that she is the woman in the wallpaper, trying to escape. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses setting and symbolism to suggest that imprisoning oppression causes a type of loneliness (in women) that can lead to a deadly form of insanity.
From the very beginning the room that is called a nursery brings to mind that of a prison cell or torture chamber. First we learn that outside the house there are locking gates, and the room itself contains barred windows and rings on the walls. The paper is stripped off all around the bed, as far as is reachable, almost as if someone had been tied to the bed with nothing else to do. A jail-like yellow is the color of the walls, which brings to mind a basement full of convicts rather than a vacation house. I think that this image of the nursery as a holding cell is first an analogy for the narrator's feelings of being imprisoned and hidden away by her husband. When she repeatedly asks John to take her away, he refuses with different excuses every time. Either their lease will almost be up, or the other room does not have enough space, etc. Even the simple request to have the paper changed is ignored: “He said that after the wall-paper was changed it would be the heavy bedstead, and then the barred windows, and the...
The narrator is ordered by her husband, who is serving as her physician as well, that she is “absolutely forbidden to work” and instead get “perfect rest,” and “all the air” the narrator can get (Gilman, 549). The narrator is confined to spend her time in a room which is playing tricks on her mind until she can no longer identify reality from her imagination. Another cause of the narrator’s loneliness is her husband’s rare presence at home due to his work as a physician, “away all day, and even some nights when his cases are serious,” leaving the narrator with his sister, who even then also leaves the narrator alone most of the time (Gilman, 550). The narrator falls into a state of insanity because she hardly had anyone with her to normally interact with. The only interaction she did have was that of the yellow wallpaper which constantly plagued her
“The Yellow Wallpaper:” a Symbol for Women As the narrator presents a dangerous and startling view into the world of depression, Charlotte Perkins Gilman introduces a completely revitalized way of storytelling using the classic elements of fiction. Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” combines a multitude of story elements that cannot be replicated. Her vast use of adjectives and horrifying descriptions of the wallpaper bring together a story that is both frightening and intensely well told. Using the story’s few characters and remote setting, Charlotte Perkins Gilman presents the wallpaper as both a representation of the narrator and the story’s theme, as well as a symbol for her descent into the abyss of insanity. As the story opens, the suspiciously unnamed narrator and her husband, John, temporarily move into a new home (226).
“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 woman behind this work of literature portrays the role of women in the society during that period of time. "The Yellow Wallpaper" written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, is a well written story describing a woman who suffers from insanity and how she struggles to express her own thoughts and feelings. The author uses her own experience to criticize male domination of women during the nineteenth century. Although the story was written fifty years ago, "The Yellow Wallpaper" still brings a clear message how powerless women were during that time.
Gilman shows through this theme that when one is forced to stay mentally inactive can only lead to mental self-destruction. The narrator is forced into a room and told to be passive, she is not allowed to have visitors, or write, or do much at all besides sleep. Her husband believes that a resting cure will rid her of her “slight hysterical tendency” (Gilman 478). Without the means to express herself or exercise her mind in anyway the narrator begins to delve deeper and deeper into her fantasies. The narrator begins to keep a secret journal, about which she states “And I know John would think it absurd. But I must say what I feel and think in some way - it is such a relief” (Gilman 483)! John tells his wife that she must control her imagination, lest it run away with her. In this way John has asserted full and complete dominance over his wife. The narrator, though an equal adult to her husband, is reduced to an infancy. In this state the narrator begins her slow descent into hysteria, for in her effort to understand herself she fully and completely loses herself.
The nursery in the story symbolizes the way women were treated like children. In the story, the narrator's husband places her in a nursery room, because she was going through post pardon depression, and he felt she shouldn't be able to see her child while she was sick. As she starts settle into the room, the more she begins to act like a child. Like a baby she could not leave the room whenever she wanted to, she couldn't do nothing but look at the wall and ceiling, and she was kept in one place under the care of her husband. John would treat her like a child by calling her names like "blessed little goose," and "little girl." Just like a baby she would cry for nothing most of the...