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The use of symbolism in the yellow wallpaper
Symbolism in The Yellow Wallpaper
The use of symbolism in the yellow wallpaper
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Through the lens of Post-Structuralism, literature is a system of signs with an impossibility of understanding their meaning due to the fact that language is unstable, arbitrary and ambiguous. The signifiers so familiar in Structuralism become floating signifiers in Post-Structuralism in that the function of a word, or phrase, is not concrete, i.e. it changes. Binary oppositions (male/female, good/bad, open/closed) represent an implied classification and as such, along with the reader/author relationship, are destabilized. Through this lens, “The Yellow Wallpaper” contains binary oppositions worthy of focus. The narrator could very well be insane as she isn’t intimately familiar with her illness, she speaks of the house as being hateful and even haunted, and she almost immediately begins to hallucinate once she moves in. On the flip side the narrator could very well be sane as she is able to write legibly and maintain her diary in a neat and orderly fashion and acts in an intelligent manner, with movements that can be considered carefully planned. This blurs the line between sanity and insanity. The short story appears to present a situation in where a woman has endured a situation designed to deliberately exclude any sort of enjoyment of activity or mental expression. As such, the …show more content…
The line between being sane or being insane is a very fine line and not easily determined. Being in a state of freedom exists simultaneously with the state of being in a state of bondage without either state being fully attainable. The issue of gender continues to create discrimination and cannot be eliminated, thus the blurring between male/female. The line between sickness and health is also blurred with hints to outside influences. While “The Yellow Wallpaper” is written to provide a truthful representation, it also provides contradictions to the same points it attempts to
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 a severe depression. Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, where in she is locked into an upstairs room.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” speaks of a woman who struggled of more than mere insanity, but also the pressures of life. Her life continuously seemed to weigh her down and she felt trapped by what was expected of her along with her mental disease. Her environment, marital relationship, and desire to escape her illness thrust Jane deeper into insanity. In the end Jane finds a way to truly escape her disease.
Academic essayists such as Susan M. Gilbert, Susan Gubar, and Elaine Showalter have a feminist reading of the story, however, this is not the most important reading. The author experienced the turmoil of the rest of the cure personally, which means that the story is most likely a comment on the great mistreatment of depression, hysteria and mental disorders in general. Despite the claims of Gilbert, Gubar, and Showalter that “The Yellow Wallpaper” is solely feminist propaganda, their analysis is often unnecessarily deep and their claims are often unwarranted, resulting in an inaccurate description of a story that is most importantly about the general mistreatment of psychosis and the descent into insanity regardless of gender. When things are stretched too thin, they become less sturdy and less reliable; the same is true for arguments in writing.... ... middle of paper ...
The gender binary portrayed in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman assesses society’s lack of respect for women with mental illness and their subsequent isolation, concluding that the binary hinders a woman’s recovery. In the story, Perkins creates a situation where in order for Jane, a woman with post-partum depression, to overcome her illness she must first utilize her insanity to eradicate the restrictive, inhibitive social expectations placed on her. Only then can Jane retake control of herself and demand the treatment she knows is necessary. The story is told in the present tense and the narrator speaks in first person, creating a sense of intimacy between the narrator and the reader. Perkins capitalises on this intimacy, highlighting the narrator’s normality and later juxtaposing it with her insanity at the very end of the story, in order to demonstrate the extreme measures Jane takes to treat her own mental illness. Dispersed through the text, Perkins leaves hints about Jane’s condition and her transformation into the creeping woman. The first example of this is when the narrator calls her husband a “young man,” addressing him from the perspective of the creeping woman, to whom John is a stranger. By calling him “young” the creeping woman suggests that she is wiser than him as well as older. Although this change in perspective is slight and hardly noticeable, it foreshadows Jane’s future transformation.
The narrator of The Yellow Wall Paper appears as any storyteller you may meet in the beginning of any story. She comes on as someone with whom you have decided to share your most comfortable reading chair and your brightest lamp, for however long she feels like spinning her yarn. But soon enough, we find ourselves re-reading passages just uttered by our narrator and begin to wonder if perhaps we’re not paying her the right amount of attention, and perhaps this confusion is the fault of the humble reader. Is our faithful narrator going insane right before our very eyes? It does not take very long for us to realize that she is undergoing metamorphic changes as she spins her tale of seclusion and distance brought on by her own husband, for reasons or motives we cannot decipher during a cursory reading; until we assemble all of the evidence we are afforded.
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 Yellow Wallpaper was written as a realism story. It showed how woman felt they had the same opportunities as men in their personal choices. In this story, the woman expressed her worries to her husband who through good intentions, required that his wife stay in bed 24/7, and not do any of the things she would normally do. In effect his wife became worse until she reached the limit. The behavior of the husband at this time was completely normal. Men were the higher power over women and women, like the one in this story, felt that they couldn?t stand count for themselves.
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
In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, through expressive word choice and descriptions, allows the reader to grasp the concepts she portrays and understand the way her unnamed narrator feels as the character draws herself nearer and nearer to insanity. “The Yellow Wallpaper” begins with the narrator writing in a journal about the summer home she and her husband have rented while their home is being remodeled. In the second entry, she mentions their bedroom which contains the horrendous yellow wallpaper. After this, not one day goes by when she doesn’t write about the wallpaper. She talks about the twisting, never-ending pattern; the heads she can see hanging upside-down as if strangled by it; and most importantly the
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.
"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.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is written in the first person narrative of a women's secret journal and her descent into madness. With the medical community of the nineteenth century misunderstanding and mistreating women, despite the protests of women. The treatment that John, the narrator’s husband, offers does not help at all, in fact throughout the story the narrator’s journal entrees and condition progressively worsens. Spending the summer in an abandoned mansion in order to recover from what her physician husband believes is a “temporary nervous depression- a slight hysterical tendency” (648). Her husband does not believe that her illness is serious the narrator states,“You see he does not believe I am sick” (647)! According to history men thought that they knew better than women, especially women who were “hysterical.” ...
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
“The Yellow Wallpaper” tells the story of a woman who is trapped in a room covered in yellow wallpaper. The story is one that is perplexing in that the narrator is arguably both the protagonist as well as the antagonist. In the story, the woman, who is the main character, struggles with herself indirectly which results in her descent into madness. The main conflicts transpires between the narrator and her husband John who uses his power as a highly recognize male physician to control his wife by placing limitations on her, forcing her to behave as a sick woman. Hence he forced himself as the superior in their marriage and relationship being the sole decision make. Therefore it can be said what occurred externally resulted in the central conflict of” “The Yellow Wallpaper being internal. The narrator uses the wallpaper as a symbol of authenticy. Hence she internalizes her frustrations rather then openly discussing them.
In Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s short story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the author takes the reader through the terrors of a woman’s psychosis. The story convey to understatements pertaining to feminism and individuality that at the time was only idealized. Gillman illustrates her chronological descent into insanity. The narrators husband John, who is also her physician diagnosed her with “nervous depression” and therefore ordered her to isolate until she recuperates. She is not only deprived of outside contact but also of her passion to write, since it could deteriorate her condition. The central conflict of the story is person versus society; the healthy part of her, in touch with herself clashing with her internalized thoughts of her society’s expectations. In a feminist point of view the central idea pertains to the social confinement that woman undergo due to their society.