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 …show more content…
The house is described as, “The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village. It makes me think of English places that you read about, for there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people” (251). However, Jane’s delusion is just that, a delusion encrypted by her mind to have her think she is living in quiet luxury. She goes on to talk about how the bed is nailed down to the floor, the walls are covered in scratches, the windows are barred, and there are rings in the walls. Obviously, Jane, despite being told by her husband that she is fine, is slowly beginning to lose sight of reality. The reader should know at this point that this “mansion” is nothing short of an insane asylum John has taken Jane to so she can rest and calm her troubles. But Jane and John’s troubles are only beginning when she is forced to sit in solitude with the awful yellow …show more content…
As the reader knows, Jane does most of her sneaking around at night when her husband is not around because she knows he would not approve. Jane begins to make it her life’s mission to free the woman trapped behind the pattern of the wallpaper, which could be interpreted as society holding the woman back from freedom. Jane becomes rather obsessed with the wallpaper and taking it down from the walls. She becomes very sneaky and secluded to the room where she watches for the woman to appear behind the
In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Gilman recounts, by means of Jane’s journal, the story of Jane and her husband John, following the birth of their baby. Like Gilman, Jane suffers from post-partum depression, and, her husband, who is a physician, locks her in the nursery on the top floor of their summer home. After the first few weeks of her summer in isolation, Jane hides her journal, which contains her true thoughts, so that John will be unaware of...
Due to Jane’s husband enforcing a life in confinement due to her nervous breakdowns, it only takes a little time for the isolation to drive her mad. In the beginning of the story, it is clear that the narrator, Jane, suffers from post-natal depression, which is a common effect after childbirth. The way Jane sees her living quarters is much different than it actually is. She imagines the rings on the walls, the torn up wallpaper, and the bars on the windows as a nursery or a school for boys, when those features actually lead the audience to realize that it is a room for the mentally ill. Her husband, also her physician, believes that in order for her metal illness to be cured is to forbid her from exercising her imagination, working, and to keep her locked away. However, his theory proves to be wrong when her mind begins to see a world inside the wallpaper, caused by the abuse from confinement. Although her husband is doing this for what he thinks is best for her well
The setting of this story is a room in a house in which Jane lives for a summer with her husband John, who is a physician. The room is large, almost the size of the entire floor. She is on medication, "phosphates or phosphites-- whichever it is," for her condition, and she has been forbidden to work (Gilman 491). Unfortunately, she was also not allowed to write, which was a deprivation of the only outlet she had. Therefore, on most days, she spent her time in that room with nothing to do except look at the four walls. In the beginning of the story we can sense that maybe she is a little crazy. She describes the house as if it is a castle. Then she says that "there is something strange about the house-- I can feel it" (Gilman 492). Next, we learn of the intriguing yellow wallpaper.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes “The Yellow Wallpaper,” to show how women’s mental illness is addressed in the time. Women were treated as the lesser or weaker sex. Women’s mental illness was highly misunderstood and misdiagnosed. “The Yellow Wallpaper,” illustrates a feminist approach to mental disease. Gilman uses this work to reach out to others to help them understand a woman’s treacherous descent into depression and psychosis. There are many contributing factors to the narrator’s illness and it is easy to see the effect the men have on her. Women were treated very differently and often outcast if they did not meet a certain norm. Mental illness is one of the main factors men believe
Through a woman's perspective of assumed insanity, Charlotte Perkins Gilman comments on the role of the female in the late nineteenth century society in relation to her male counterpart in her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper." Gilman uses her own experience with mental instability to show the lack of power that women wielded in shaping the course of their psychological treatment. Further she uses vivid and horrific imagery to draw on the imagination of the reader to conceive the terrors within the mind of the psychologically wounded.
...e his wife tearing the yellow paper like manic and creeping over him to tear the yellow wallpaper symbolizes the power now Jane has over her husband shifting the traditional gender roles even though it temporary .The tearing of the yellow wallpaper symbolizes Jane’s traditional gender role of being an obedient wife was a imprison to her l health .Jane felt trapped without a voice and not being able to do anything but to obey reflects her imprisonment to the woman trapped in the yellow wallpaper and the need to be free. In which in her own way she escapes her traditional gender role by letting the woman out and taking control of her husband when she locks the door and he faints.
Jane’s new home seems to make her feel very uncomfortable from the beginning of “The Yellow Wallpaper” when she states “that there is something queer about it.” She says that John tells her the vacation home will be a good place for her, but even seems unsure of that proclamation herself (Gilman 956). Jane begins to describe her environment and speaks of how she is unsure of exactly what the room was used for before her arrival. She speaks of bars on the windows and strange rings on the wall. More significantly she speaks of the “repellant” and “revolting” wallpaper on the wall that seems to disturb Jane a deal more than any of the other odd décor in the room. She also speaks of how the children must have really hated it and that is why is has been peeled off in places (Gilman 957). The wallpaper continues to bother Jane throughout “The Yellow Wallpaper”, but Jane also begins to dislike her husband.
It’s 2:00am and I cannot sleep. I toss and turn while the question, “Why didn’t you stand up for yourself?” keeps playing over and over in my mind. The picture in my mind of a subjugated woman who feebly attempts to fight against feminine oppression and her impending insanity is vivid and disturbing and continues to slap against the recesses of my mind with an angry hand. What was Charlotte Perkins Gilman attempting to convey to her readers when she wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper” and created the characters of the narrator, her husband John, Mary and her sister-in-law Jennie? Obviously, in an exaggerated version of her own experience with post-partum depression and its prescribed “rest cure”, Gilman speaks of a world in which the female is forced into a role of the submissive counterpart to male dominance. In the following pages, I will describe how Gilman has effectively created characters that draw us into their view of control, dominance and frustrated silence against imprisonment in a paternalistic society, and how we are given a view into a perfectly healthy mind that goes awry.
In Charlotte Perkins Gillman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the protagonist, Jane, gives an account of her current depression-stricken state that seems to be misunderstood by those close to her. The story is written in a journal-like style from a first person point of view. Jane, suffering from a sort of illness—which she believes others have belittled to nervous depression—has been given strict orders to do nothing in an attempt to cure her sickness. Although her physician husband, John, seems to take care of her by providing a stay at a summer vacation home, she begins to resent him and sees him as imprisoning. She hides her thoughts from him and uses a secret journal as an escape to express her true feelings. At first, Jane hates the yellow wallpaper in her room; but after spending many hours in isolation there, the yellow wallpaper begins to fascinate Jane. Soon, it dominates her thinking and she becomes unusually obsessed with it, identifying with the woman in the wallpaper who seems to be trapped. Eventually, Jane becomes extremely crazy and although she wants to gain freedom, the story ends with her being trapped more than ever by her own crazed state of mind. Throughout the story, the author incorporates literary elements such as irony, imagery, and symbolism to help the reader understand and identify with Jane.
In the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” author Charlotte Perkins Gilman gives us a chance to see into the mind of a woman during the Victorian Era who is gradually becoming insane. Her insanity is incomprehensibly brought on by efforts made by her physician husband and brother to help restore her psychological well-being. Through out the story, the narrator is living a stereotypical lifestyle of a mother and a wife who is hindered and oppressed. This story portrays a time in society where women were dominated by men and not allowed to proclaim themselves the way men were allowed to. The narrator is also trapped in this common
“The most beautiful place! It is quite alone, standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village” (Gilman 2). She goes on in more detail about how luscious the plant life is around the house and who owned it before John rented it. Jane loves the room on the ground floor but John won’t allow her to move for health reasons. “Your exercise depends on your strength, my dear... and your food somewhat on your appetite; but air you can absorb all the time.” (Gilman 3). As the story moves along Jane mentions the rest of the house less and less as the wallpaper takes her attention. The moonlight plays a roll with the wallpaper by making it seem like it shifts and changes. “It was moonlight. The moon shines in all around just as the sun does. I hate to see it sometimes; it creeps so slowly, and always comes in by one window or another.” (Gilman 8). It referring to the lady “behind the wallpaper”, seemly moves with the moonlight, Jane also mentions she seemed to shake the paper before John
The wallpaper is the closest thing Jane connected to throughout the short story. The wallpaper is the only object in the story that is fully detailed, becoming a well-rounded character. With this in mind, the wallpaper and Jane fits well under the 21st century parameters of love especially with trust, respect, communication, sacrifice, quality time, intimacy, understanding, and independence. The short story read from “The Yellow Wallpaper” is of her diary she kept since the first day of their move. Throughout the book, we see breaks in the short story based on when Jennie or John walks into the picture. When they are not present that is when Jane continues to write. There is a sense of trust built and is seen especially at the end when she brings her diary into her bedroom writing about the women behind the wallpaper. The wallpaper became something precious to
If she got out “in spite” of him it implies that he was actively doing something to keep her inside of the wallpaper. This, then, must be a reference to the method by which John was trying to “cure” his wife’s mental illness. The regiment consisted of “…journeys, and air, and exercise.” (Stetson 648) Jane contested that the treatment did not help her condition. The remark about Jane in the former quote pits her against the woman in the wallpaper. Since Jane has become one with the woman in the wallpaper, and there is an implication that the woman overpowered Jane, it becomes clear that the woman was never an external entity at all. Rather, she was a part of Jane’s consciousness. If one accepts this line of reasoning, then it becomes clear that the room symbolizes Jane’s mind. Her physical presence in the room itself represents her conscious mind, while the woman behind the wallpaper represents her subconscious drive to have agency over her own
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" serves as a semi-autobiographical short story that deals with the struggles of postpartum psychosis and its' repercussions as witnessed through the story's unnamed female narrator. By analyzing, Gilman’s approach to exploring the concept of social conventions and patriarchal oppression. Gilman's story can be analyzed in depth as both being an anti-feminist and feminist piece of literature. These aspects include the narrator's husband treatment towards her individuality, her fascination with the yellow wallpaper and her eventual fulfillment of independence.
A major theme in "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is that solitary confinement and exclusion from the public results in insanity. The use of imagery and setting helps illustrate this theme throughout the story. The unnamed protagonist in this story suffers from a nervous disorder which is enhanced by her feeling of being trapped within a room. The setting of the vast colonial mansion and particularly the nursery room with barred windows provides an image of loneliness and seclusion experienced by the protagonist. Another significant setting is the mansion connected by a "shaded lane" (66) to the beautiful bay and private wharf. It is possible that in her mind, she sees a path which leads to the curing of her illness where happiness and good health awaits at the end. The reason the lane is "shaded" is because she is uncertain whether or not this path can be traveled. Upon moving into the mansion, she immediately becomes obsessed with the nursery room wallpaper with "sprawling, flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin" (64). Her days and nights are so uneventful that she finds relief in writing a journal which becomes more tiresome as her sickness progresses. In every few paragraphs in her journal, she analyzes the wallpaper. Through the imagery she evokes from the wallpaper, it can be seen that she is really analyzing herself and her illness subconsciously. For example, she begins to see "a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design" (67).