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Literary analysis essay of the yellow wallpaper
Oppression in yellow wallpaper
Literary analysis essay of the yellow wallpaper
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What happens when one is stripped of their individuality and forced to live under the thumb of another? Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” depicts such a scenario in which the short story’s unnamed protagonist falls victim to such a crime. Upon first glance, the story appears to be a frightful account of a woman gone mad. However, through further analysis, it becomes clear that the story more specifically centers on the narrator’s journey of identity in spite of the intimidation of a male-dominated society. While it is apparent that the narrator is ill from the beginning of the short story, her mental state slowly deteriorates as her wishes and personal feelings are relentlessly ignored by her partner, John. Her state additionally …show more content…
From the “gouged and splintered” floor to the chewed bedstead, each mentioned object contributes to the story’s eerie setting as well as to the narrator’s confinement (229). Objects such as the bolted bed and the bars on the window symbolize the narrator’s inability to do as she pleases, yet another factor which constrains her. At the center of it all is the yellow wallpaper. While the narrator at first regards the yellow wallpaper as “repellant” and “revolting,” she slowly becomes more and more entranced by it and, more specifically, that which lies behind it (227). She begins to imagine a woman inside the wallpaper, looking for escape behind the pattern which entraps her. Under close scrutiny, it is easy to see that the woman inside the wallpaper is a reflection of the narrator, while the wallpaper acts as yet another theoretical cage to entrap her. Just as with the setting, the author uses everyday objects to demonstrate the muddled emotions that the narrator subconsciously feels due to the pressures laden upon …show more content…
John, though his intentions may be pure, easily slips into the role of the tyrannical male figure. Not only do his actions work to dominate and suppress the narrator, they actually contribute to her mental deterioration. When she relates her feelings to him concerning matters such as her room or her health, he dismisses her as if she were a child. In one scene, the narrator comes to her husband to request she be taken away from her environment and confesses that she is not “gaining” (232). However, John refuses her request, believing her to be a “little girl” who does not know better (232). Such a role is one that is forced upon the narrator, likening her to a woman in distress and isolated from the world around her. She is incapable of doing anything or seeing anyone because her husband compels her, repressing her creativity and individualism. She is forced to remain in the old nursery room until hallucinations drive her mad. Not only are such character roles marks of gothic fiction, they are also reflections of the traditional gender roles which governed the time period. John’s suppressive characterization mimics that of the dominating male figures in society, while the narrator is forced to take the role of the obedient wife. As if John’s clear domination and ruling over her was not clear, the narrator is not even given a clear name until she breaks free
"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.
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 stories “Shouldn't I Feel Pretty?” and “The Yellow Wallpaper” feature a dynamic protagonist who undergoes a character development which reveals the consequences of oppression caused by societal standards. Gilman crafted the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” with the purpose of exposing the tyrannical role of gender roles to women. In the story, the narrator suffers a slight postpartum depression in the beginning, but her condition gets progressively worse because her husband John believes “that there is nothing the matter with [her] but temporary nervous depression-- a slight hysterical tendency” (331). He concludes that the best treatment for his wife is for her to be “absolutely forbidden to ‘work’ until [she is] well again” (332).
The windows are barred, symbolizing the restrictive nature of the narrator’s mental condition. She is imprisoned within her mind. Her room was once a nursery, symbolizing that she is helpless and dependent on her husband’s care, similar to how a parent is reliant on the care of it’s parents, “… for the windows are barred for little children,” (Gilman 2). The narrator is not only trapped by her own mind and mental condition, but her husband’s wishes and expectations as well. The most significant symbol within the story is the yellow wallpaper. Initially, the narrator only views the wallpaper as something unpleasant, but over time she becomes fascinated with it’s formless pattern and tries to figure out how it’s organized. She discovers a sub-pattern within in it in which she distinguishes as a barred change with the heads of women that have attempted to escape the wallpaper like the woman she has been “seeing” moving within the wallpaper, “And she is all the time trying to climb through. But nobody could climb through that pattern - it strangles so; I think that is why it has so many heads” (Gilman 8). The yellow wallpaper is symbolic of a women’s place in society within the nineteenth century. It was not commonplace, or deemed acceptable, for women to be financially independent and/or engage in intellectual activity. The wallpaper is symbolic of those economic, intellectual, and social restrictions women were held to, as well as the domestic lives they were expected to lead. The narrator is so restricted by these social norms that her proper name is never given within the story, her only identity is “John’s wife”. At the climax of the story, the narrator identifies completely with the woman in the wallpaper and believes that by tearing the wallpaper, both she and the woman would be freed of their domestic prisons, “…there are so many of those
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s bodies of work, Gilman highlights scenarios exploring traditional interrelations between man and woman while subtexting the necessity for a reevaluation of the paradigms governing these relations. In both of Gilman’s short stories, “The Yellow Wallpaper” and “Turned”, women are victimized, subjected and mistreated. Men controlled and enslaved their wives because they saw them as their property. A marriage was male-dominated and women’s lives were dedicated to welfare of home and family in perseverance of social stability. Women are expected to always be cheerful and good-humored. Respectively, the narrator and Mrs. Marroner are subjugated by their husbands in a society in which a relationship dominated by the male is expected.
Under the orders of her husband, the narrator was moved to a house far from society in the country, wherein she is locked into an upstairs room. This environment serves not as an inspiration for mental health but as an element of repression. The locked door and barred windows serves to physically restrain her. "The windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls."(p218). Being exposed to the room's yellow wallpaper is dreadful and fosters only negative creativity. "The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing.(p224). All through the story the yellow paper acts as an antagonist causing her to become very annoyed and disturbed. There is nothing to do in the secluded room but stare at the wallpaper. The narrator tells of the haphazard pattern having no organization or symmetrical plot. Her constant examination and reflection of the wallpaper causes her much travail. "I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless Johnston 2 pattern to some sort of a conclusion." (p221).
Throughout the short story The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman the reader can identify how the narrator’s interpretation of the yellow wallpapers changes as she became mad and fixated on the pattern hidden within. As the story progresses, the viewer can discover how the wallpaper becomes significant to the narrator, through her fascination with the ostensibly formless model, and urge to figure out what it means. The pattern within the unsettling yellow wallpaper is a vital symbol within the text because as the narrator’s interpretation of the pattern changes, the wallpaper figuratively begins to reflect how she feels trapped. The narrator’s obsession with the patterned wallpaper
...chniques that Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses in "The Yellow Wallpaper" to suggest that a type of loneliness (in women) caused by imprisoning oppression can lead to the deadliest form of insanity. By using setting, Gilman shows how the barred windows intensifies the young woman's imprisoning oppression, the isolated summer home represents the loneliness the young woman feels, and her hallucinations of the wallpaper pattern indicates her transition to insanity. Wallpaper symbolism is used throughout the story the pattern representing the strangling nature of the imprisoning oppression, the fading yellow color showing the fading away of the young woman, and the hovering smell representing the deadly insanity to which she succumbs. Like the darkness that quickly consumes, the imprisoning loneliness of oppression swallows its victim down into the abyss of insanity.
She analyzes the significant languages, images, and symbols used in the text. After Barbara analyzed the short story, it basically pinpoints that Gilman’s was trying to make a feminist statement. Suess also goes into details about the representation of patriarchy in society and she tied it to text. The article showed that a form of patriarchy is introduced in the story, and that Gilman used John to represent a patriarchy and society. Barbara stated that in the story, John is a clear representation law, order, and reality. The article revealed that John 's suppression of Jane 's efforts to gain control of her own life through her choice of medicine and the opportunity to write reflects the more general oppression of Jane, as a woman and as a mentally ill person. I believe this article would be beneficial for my research paper because it goes into details about the story and talks about specific symbols used in the text that point towards my theory of how Gilman is making a feminist statement in the
At the beginning of this story, the narrator sees the wallpaper as ugly and dull. Then towards the middle a lot deeper meanings start to develop. She starts to see imaginative people in the wallpaper. These objects/people start to talk to her and make her think about her life. In the yellow wallpaper, she sees a striped pattern and to her it looks like a jail cell. With this, it reminds her of all the women stuck in second class not being able to speak up with their own voice. She believes that the wallpaper stands for something, holding women back from their life. Then at the end of the story, the wallpaper turns ugly and she has begun a since of insanity. She has begun to tear down the wallpaper and go
“The Yellow Wallpaper” short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a picture of women’s life at that time. The story is a gothic horror tale, in which Gilman tried to convey her life to the readers. This story takes place in 1892, which is a century ago. It is story about a mentally troubled young woman named Jane. Even though it is a fictive story, it is still semi-autobiographical. Gilman had the same condition “Nervous Breakdown” as Jane in the story, and her doctor advised her to “’Live as domestic a life as far as possible,’ to ‘have but two hours intellectual life a day,’ and ‘never touch pen, brush, or pencil again’ as long as you lived’”(Gilman 1). It almost sounds like taking somebody’s life away without killing them. Gilman was lead by her husband just like Jane in the story, and never found him to be wrong, no matter what he says. It was maybe because of
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman, is a feminist short story. It is about a woman who is mentally ill and gets misdiagnosed by her controlling husband. He puts her in a room saying doing nothing will cure her. While in the room she becomes captivated by the yellow wallpaper. She starts to see a trapped woman in the wallpaper. The woman’s obsession over the wallpaper and imprisonment in the room causes her to lose her mind. She has fallen victim to her madness in her desire to let the woman out the wallpaper. Her husband faints upon seeing what she has become. The woman and her oppressive husband’s relationship are that of prisoner and warden. The yellow wallpaper harbors the narrator’s state of mind. This short story dwells
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.
In literature, women are often depicted as weak, compliant, and inferior to men. The nineteenth century was a time period where women were repressed and controlled by their husband and other male figures. Charlotte Gilman, wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper," showing her disagreement with the limitations that society placed on women during the nineteenth century. According to Edsitement, the story is based on an event in Gilman’s life. Gilman suffered from depression, and she went to see a physician name, Silas Weir Mitchell. He prescribed the rest cure, which then drove her into insanity. She then rebelled against his advice, and moved to California to continue writing. She then wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which is inflated version of her experience. In "The Yellow Wallpaper," the main character is going through depression and she is being oppressed by her husband and she represents the oppression that many women in society face. Gilman illustrates this effect through the use of symbols such as the yellow wallpaper, the nursery room, and the barred windows.
Upon moving in to her home she is captivated, enthralled with the luscious garden, stunning greenhouse and well crafted colonial estate. This was a place she fantasized about, qualifying it as a home in which she seemed comfortable and free. These thoughts don’t last for long, however, when she is prescribed bed rest. She begins to think that the wallpaper, or someone in the wallpaper is watching her making her feel crazy. She finally abandons her positivity towards what now can be considered her husband’s home, and only labels negative features of the home. For example, the narrator rants about the wallpaper being, “the strangest yellow…wallpaper! It makes me think of… foul, bad yellow things” (Gilman). One can only imagine the mental torture that the narrator is experiencing, staring at the lifeless, repulsive yellow hue of ripping