I resided deep within a wooded glen in this modest chalet. It served one denizen and perhaps a visitor. The floral wallpaper was faded, torn and warped. The dusty floor was constructed of uneven planks that whined and bent when pressure was applied. The furniture was minimal and simple. There was a twin mattress raised upon a metal structure and a long wooden table with a single chair. At one end, the table was blotched with red stains and scratches along the edges. The kitchen held a small stove and a cracked wooden counter was a large worn dinner plate and fine cutlery. This cabin had been my home since early in my youth. My parents had abandoned me, for they had sensed my "sickness" early and hence discovered that it had been too much of …show more content…
a burden for them to properly handle. Thus they left me for dead in a forest on the outskirts of society in my slumber. As I strived to survive, in knowing my provisions had been deleted from my life, I explored these woods and found the wreck of a cabin that I captured as my fortress. I had learned to survive from survivors I observed. The skillful hunters of the forest floor gnawed at the necks of their live victims. There victims would fall limply in defeat, spraying their precious blood upon the face of their masters. I began to hunt the hunted and soon the hunter much like the creatures had taught me. I would chase them and force them to collapse as I gnawed at their throats. I educated myself through the moldy books the cabin had provided: the works of Chaucer, Keats, Shakespeare, Dickens, and Milton.
I learned of love, reason, value, and vice. I learned of perspectives of evil and good. I read historical counts that I acquired from homes on the edge of the wood. I learned the social order of this world I did not belong to and soon, in realizing the reality of my condition I understood my thirst for blood as a thirst for human life. I understood my parents discomfort with our differing mindsets. Through my research I understood society's rejection of such thought and action but as well I understood the justification of such matters. I understood the exceptions to vice. Massacre would occur continuously through society in the effort to eliminate an evil and produce a good. Murder was a virtue inherently if it provided an honest, justifiable good or superior service to …show more content…
another. I thoroughly enjoyed reading of the uses of swords and daggers. It had stirred a lust in my heart as I pictured metal objects being inserted into the hearts of another and removing the life from within. Thus I began my experimentation. Leaning over my subjects I would force the knives deep into their heart with close precision. On this night, I would recreate this process. Cracking open the ripped screen-door attached loosely by rusted hinges beyond the onerous opening, I emerged from the cabin and was greeted by the dim pearly luminescence of the moon that abides half-hidden behind blueish-grey clouds, piercing through the burnt sky.
I stumbled onto the porch and hear the decrepit wooden planks creak beneath my feet. The cabin had aged and had succumb to the power of the prime mover in its neglected state. Kudzu vines ran along the structure, strangling the the cedar pillars that held the roof above the porch. One side of the debacle had been defeated by the ensnarement and slouched toward the earth. However, the somber structure survives in spite. It contests sanguine in the grip of the strangling savage. But the master shall prevail and the slave will fall. It will one day be devoured and its remains, buried by its master, never to be unearthed, misinterpreted as a ridge rather than a
martyr. Breathing in the fresh air, acknowledging the pine aroma I abided lavish and robust. I was omnipotent, the taker of life and provider of death. I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest of victors. I stood high above the towering pines, a threat to the health of the forest. The green pigment of the needles on the trees in my shadow fade and fall, leaving the tree naked and vulnerable. Soon these trees would perish and fall victims of my own intention and a fertilizer to my roots. They would keep me nourished, free from my deep hunger: my troubling, uncanny, unruly desires. They would keep me civil and sain, free from the longing thirst for heavenly crimson liquid.
"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.
Ted Kooser’s “Abandoned Farmhouse” is a tragic piece about a woman fleeing with her child, the husband ditched in isolation. The mood of the poem is dark and lonesome, by imagining the painting the writer was describing I felt grim because of what the family went through. As reported in the text, ”Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.” This demonstrates the understanding of why they deserted the farmhouse. The author also composes, “And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.” This proves that the residence was unaccompanied. When placing the final touches, the reader begins feeling dark and lonesome, asking about the families disappearance.
...ome the dream of attainment slowly became a nightmare. His house has been abandoned, it is empty and dark, the entryway or doors are locked. The sign of age, rust comes off in his hands. His body is cold, and he has deteriorated physically & emotionally. He is weathered just like his house and life. He is damaged poor, homeless, and the abandoned one.
After reading Charlotte Perkins Gillman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" I have come to think that the narrator does not suffer from hysteria. I have reached this idea from comparing the research I have done on hysteria to her symptoms in the story. In this paper I will discuss why I feel the narrator does not suffer from hysteria but may be suffering from postpartum depression.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper is partly autobiographical and it illustrates the fight for selfhood by a women in an oppressed and oppressive environment. In the story, the narrator is not allowed to write or think, basically becoming more dysfunctional as she is entrapped in a former nursery room where bars adorn the windows and the bed is nailed to the floor. In this story there is an obstinacy on behalf of the narrator as she tries to go around her husband's and physician's restrictions, however, there is no resisting the oppressive nature of her environment and she finally surrenders to madness even though it represents some kind of selfhood and resistance because it allows her to escape her oppression, "She obsesses about the yellow wallpaper, in which she sees frightful patterns and an imprisoned female figure trying to emerge. The narrator finally escapes from her controlling husband and the intolerable confines of her existence by a final descent into insanity as she peels the wallpaper off and bars her husband from the room" (Gilman, 1999, 1).
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.
As man developed more complex social systems, society placed more emphasis of childbearing. Over time, motherhood was raised to the status of “saintly”. This was certainly true in western cultures during the late 19th/early 20th century. Charlotte Perkins Gilman did not agree with the image of motherhood that society proposed to its members at the time. “Arguably ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ reveals women’s frustration in a culture that seemingly glorifies motherhood while it actually relegates women to nursery-prisons” (Bauer 65). Among the many other social commentaries contained within this story, is the symbolic use of the nursery as a prison for the main character.
Throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman tells her readers the story of a woman desperate to be free. Gilman’s use of symbolism is nothing short of brilliant in telling the story of a new mother suffering from postpartum depression and fighting her way through societies ideas of what a woman should be. When her husband, John, also known as her physician, tells her nothing is wrong with her mind, at first she believes him because she knows that society tells her she should. However, with her husband’s misdiagnosis, or attempt to keep his wife sane for the sake of their reputation, comes a short journey into madness for his wife, Jane. Jane’s downward spiral, as one may call it, turns out to be not so downward when the reader
Haney-Peritz, Janice. "Monumental Feminism and Literature 's Ancestral House: Another Look At 'The Yellow Wallpaper '." Women 's Studies 12.2 (1986): 113. Academic Search Complete. Web. 24 Nov. 2014.
The psychologically thrilling story of “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman explores the dark and twisted aspect of the American society in the nineteenth century. Through the use of theme, Gilman creatively captures the cultural subordination and struggles women faced on a regular basis.
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.
When looking at two nineteenth century works of change for two females in an American society, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Stephen Crane come to mind. A feminist socialist and a realist novelist capture moments that make their readers rethink life and the world surrounding. Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” was first published in 1892, about a white middle-class woman who was confined to an upstairs room by her husband and doctor, the room’s wallpaper imprisons her and as well as liberates herself when she tears the wallpaper off at the end of the story. On the other hand, Crane’s 1893 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is the realist account of a New York girl and her trials of growing up with an alcoholic mother and slum life world. The imagery in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets uses color in unconventional ways by embedding color in their narratives to symbolize the opposite of their common meanings, allowing these colors to represent unique associations; to support their thematic concerns of emotional, mental and societal challenges throughout their stories; offering their reader's the opportunity to question the conventionality of both gender and social systems.
The Narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator becomes more depressed throughout the story because of the recommendation of isolation that was made to her. In this short story, the narrator is detained in a lonesome, drab room in an attempt to free herself of a nervous disorder. The narrator’s husband, a physician, adheres to this belief and forces his wife into a treatment of solitude. Rather than heal the narrator of her psychological disorder, the treatment only contributes to its effects, driving her into severe depression.
Home, in contemporary literature, often plays an integral role often symbolizing security, unison, and support; although, things were not always this way. “The Yellow Wallpaper”, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, depicts the all-too-real struggle many women faced in the nineteenth century and earlier. This short passage portrays the narrative of female intellectual oppression – an examination of nineteenth century social mores. The passage voices the common practice of diagnosing women with “rest cure” who displayed symptoms of depression and anxiety with a supposed treatment of lying in bed for several weeks, allowing no more than twenty minutes of intellectual application per day. Women, at this time, were considered to be the second sex – weaker and more fragile, unable to grapple the same daily activities as men – and such the “rest cure” prevents women from using any form of thinking, trusting the notion that naturally the female mind is empty. Not even were
The dark, burnt red house with wood siding and white trim sat in the middle of a large green yard. My brothers and I spent many hours outside. We fed and played with our pets and various farm animals that lived in the scattered outbuildings. An old refrigerator turned on its side, with the ends cut off, had been turned into a rabbit hutch. As I turned the handle to open the oversized chicken coop, the hens clucked and jumped off the roost. In the frantic exit ou...