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Important symbolism in the yellow wallpaper
Important symbolism in the yellow wallpaper
Important symbolism in the yellow wallpaper
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The Yellow Wallpaper and The Awakening were two works written during the Age of Expression. The entire country was going through an era of Reconstruction; politically, socially, culturally and econmically . The Yellow Wallpaper and The Awakening are feminist works aimed at the psychological, social, and cultural injustices during the era. According to Mizruchi, “ Cosmopolitanism aroused dis-ease: depression and disaection were prevalent in a society whose pace and variety seemed relentless. Yet the same circumstances also instilled hope. For it was widely recognized that the burgeoning heterogeneity of a newly global America would be a source of enduring vitality.”(Mizruchi, 2008) The wives portrayed in these works defeated the attitudes of their husbands during this patriarchal culture.
The patriarchal times prescribed a “rest cure” for neurasthenia (minor depression). Today neurasthenia would be called post-partum depression. Rest and quiet was prescribed as an antidote used ardently by the medical establishment in the United States. The medical establishment was dominated by men, like the husband John in The Yellow Wallpaper. The wife in The Yellow Wallpaper defeated her husband John by accepting madness over repression, refusing a life of "unhappy, silent acceptance." John, her husband, forbids her to do anything but marital things. He did not like her to write. Writing symbolized her using her mind. Artistic abilities including writing, was trivial to him. In rebellion, within the yellow wallpapered “cell”, she used her mind to create a Gothic, shadowy world full of her mad fantasies and artistic revolt (including thoughts of burning the house down), and escaping into a suppressed rage. The suppressed rage eventual...
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...the “sea” to her death of privacy, freedom, and comfort.
t Kate Chopin's story The Awakening and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story The Yellow Wallpaper draw their power from two truths: First, each work stands as a political cry against injustice and at the socio/political genesis of the modern feminist movement. Second, each text is a gatekeeper of a new literary history. Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman seem to initiate a new phase in textual history where literary conventions are revised to serve an ideology representative of the "new" feminine presence. Two conventions in particular seem of central importance: "marriage" and "propriety".
Works Cited
Mizruchi S. Rise of Multicultural America : Economy and Print Culture, 1865-1915 [e-book]. University of North Carolina Press; 2008. Available from: eBook Collection, Ipswich, MA. Accessed August 30, 2011.
Kate Chopin and Charlotte Perkins Gilman were both highly influential realist and naturalist writers. Both authors wrote many pieces of literature which are focused around feminist themes and ideas of life and death. Two of these pieces are “The Yellow Wallpaper”, which is written by Gilman, and “Desiree’s Baby”, which is written by Chopin. Many factors have influenced these writers, such as stressors of their time periods, life experiences, and personal beliefs. Both of these short stories exhibit feminism due to life experiences as well as different viewpoints on death based on personal beliefs.
Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” are both centralized on the feministic views of women coming out to the world. Aside from the many differences within the two short stories, there is also similarities contained in Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” such as the same concept of the “rest treatment” was prescribed as medicine to help deal with their sickness, society’s views on the main character’s illness, and both stories parallel in the main character finding freedom in the locked rooms that they contain themselves in.
At the time Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” she was considered a prominent feminist writer. This piece of background information allows the readers to see Gilman’s views on women’s rights and roles in the 18th century; “The Yellow Wallpaper” suggests that women in the 18th century were suppressed into society’s marital gender roles. Gilman uses the setting and figurative language, such as symbolism, imagery, and metaphors to convey the theme across.
Kate Chopin wrote “The Story of an Hour” in 1894; it describes a young married women named Louise confronting years of suppression that vanish with her husband’s death leaving her with unimaginable freedom. A few years later in 1899, Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” which portrayed a married woman’s struggle against insanity. The similarities between the two would seem unapparent, other than the fact that both women in the stories are married. When submersing oneself deeper into the stories, one can see the analogy between their wedded husbands, and the controlling grips they have on their wives. However, if a person truly descends within the two texts, accord and disparity layers itself with symbolism; the two stories show unique settings and elaborate imagery that pose multiple similarities as well as differences.
“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.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Gilman is a chilling portrayal of a woman’s downward spiral towards madness after undergoing treatment for postpartum depression in the 1800’s. The narrator, whose name remains nameless, represents the hundreds of middle to upper- class women who were diagnosed with “hysteria” and prescribed a “rest” treatment. Although Gilman’s story was a heroic attempt to “save people from being driven crazy” (Gilman p 1) by this type of “cure” it was much more. “The Yellow Wallpaper” opened the eyes of many to the apparent oppression of women in the 1800’s and “possibly the only way they could (unconsciously) resist or protest their traditional ‘feminine’ work—or over-work” (Chesler p 11) by going “mad”.
In the stories “A Rose for Emily” written by William Faulkner, and “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, talk about how two women are experiencing the same emotional situations they have to endure. Both of these stories express the emotional and physical trials the characters have to endure on an everyday basis. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” it shows a woman who is oppressed and is suffering from depression and loneliness. In “A Rose for Emily” it is showing the struggle of maintaining a tradition and struggling with depression. Both of the stories resemble uncontrollable changes and the struggles of acceptance the characters face during those changes.
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, "The Yellow Wallpaper," Gilman makes adamant statements about feminism and the oppression of women during the 19th century. This story allows the reader to see into the mind of a woman who is slowly going insane and suffering from postpartum depression. During the 19th century, women were forced into a certain stereotype, that of wife and mother. Women were not allowed to express and challenge themselves the way men were. Just as the narrator of the story is trapped in her room, women are trapped in pretentious acts that do not allow them to explore their creativity and intelligence. Gilman displays how easily one can go insane when they are suppressed by a patriarchal society. Gilman’s illustration of a subordinate wife, fully dominated by her husband, proposes a sense of gender stereotypes, as well as the treatments prescribed for the mentally ill; as the narrator is forced to become unproductive, John continues to act superior to his wife and treat her like a prisoner and child.
Narration is one literary element of a story that controls the meaning and themes perceived by the reader. The author uses this as a way of putting themselves in their writing; they portray a personal reflection through the narrator. We see this in pieces of literature, such as Charlotte Gilman’s, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, an intense short story that critics believe to be an autobiography. Charlotte Gilman wrote this piece in 1892, around the time of her own personal mental depression, after the birth of her child. This story invites the readers into the mind of a well-educated writer who is mentally ill, and takes you through the recordings of her journal, as her mental health deteriorates so does the credibility of her writing. The author uses the element of the narrators’ mental health to create a story with different meanings and themes to her audience. Gilman uses the role of an unreliable narrator to persuade the audience’s perception of protagonists’ husband John and create a theme of entrapment.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s literary work “The Yellow Wallpaper” expresses a dominating relationship between a husband and a compliant wife and her gradual decent into insanity. The wife, suffering from postpartum depression, is secluded from societal influences in attempts to return her to a healthier state of mind. She is not allowed to write or think in her isolated room and over a course of three months becomes more dysfunctional as she is entrapped in what she describes as a former nursery. Her determination to go against her husband’s and physician’s restrictions ultimately makes her surrender into madness because it symbolizes her escape from oppression and resistance from the treatment she is subjected to. Critics may claim that the insanity that the wife suffers from was not the cause of her treatments but existed early in her childhood and that the room in which she occupies is in an insane asylum. However, over the course of time her seclusion makes her fixate on yellow wallpaper in her room. Eventually her fascination of the wallpaper becomes an obsession and she begins to fantasize of imprisoned women behind the paper. By the end of the story she can no longer distinguish fiction from reality and eventually looses any sanity that she held in the beginning of the story. Additionally, the isolated treatments provided by her husband plays a great role in her breakdown and her animalistic behaviors exhibited upon her husband’s return.
?The Yellow Wallpaper? and ?The Story of an Hour? are two feminist works that highlight the importance of freedom for women in the oppressive world of men. Freedom is not achieved normally in either of the short stories, but is gained through insanity and death. These two stories prove that women?s liberation is an extremely important issue, and the means by which these women gained their freedom is remarkable.
Takaki, Ronald. "A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America." 1993. Border Texts: Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co, 1999. 589-596.
Charlotte’s P. Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper” narrates the repressive nature of the 19th century towards the female figure, and how this ignorant and superior attitude towards women led a young wife and mother to a mental breakdown. Her suppressed mind starting seeking relief by finding a meaning to the yellow wallpaper that surrounded her, reflecting in it the restrictions of her marriage and society.
It becomes obvious that the physician is unaware of the mind of women, and believes the best form of treatment for his wife is confinement and rest. The narrator states, “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?” (Gilman, 3). Further support can be proved when viewing “The Yellow Wallpaper” in historical context. Pouba and Tianen illustrate how many of the medical theories and practices of the nineteenth century often misunderstood the female psyche. Physicians often misdiagnosed and placed women in mental institutions for questionable reasons such as nervousness, suppressed menustruation and religious excitement. Women had minimal rights during this time period, even regarding their own mental state
In the story the Yellow Wallpaper, a theme of this that I want to argue is the importance of self-expression for women in the 19th century. People didn't care about advocating for woman’s rights when John and the narrator move into a temporary home. she don't like the necessity of such a move and she starts to wonders if the mysterious house is haunted. John shows his superior attitude toward his wife by laughing at her fancies, a response which the narrator finds quite natural because , she must expect such treatment in marriage. In the yellow wallpaper John, the narrator's husband thinks he knows what she should do and how she should do it which contributed to the narrator madness. When it became the purview of males in the medical profession soon the women in the yellow wallpaper start to feel like she is having a mental illness. the narrator in the yellow wallpaper is suffering from some type of disorder her husband is a physician believes that only complete rest will cure his wife.At first, she tries to fight against the growing lack of energy that