Caught in the Yellow Wallpaper
"The pattern is torturing. You think you have mastered it, but just as you get well underway in following, it turns a back-somersault and there you are. It slaps you in the face, knocks you down, and tramples upon you."
As her madness progresses the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper becomes increasingly aware of a woman present in the pattern of the wallpaper. She sees this woman struggling against the paper's "bars". Later in her madness she imagines there to be many women lost in its "torturing" pattern, trying in vain to climb through it. The woman caught in the wallpaper seems to parallel the narrator's virtual imprisonment by her well-meaning husband. While the narrator's perception of the wallpaper reveals her increasing madness, it effectively symbolizes the struggle of women who attempt to break out of society's feminine standards.
The narrator writes furtively in her room, having to hide her writing from her family. They feel that her only road to recovery is through total R & R, that she should not have to lift a finger, let alone stimulate a single neuron in her female brain. While she appreciates their concern she feels stifled and bored. She feels that her condition is only being worsened by her lack of stimulus, but it is not simply boredom that bothers her. She is constantly feeling guilty and unappreciative for questioning her family's advice. This causes her to question her self-awareness and her own perception of reality. "I sometimes fancy that in my condition if I had less opposition and more society and stimulus; but John says the very worst thing I can do is to think about my condition, and I confess it always makes me feel bad." She also faults...
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... it. The pattern also represents the limits society places on women and the resistance of society to women, such as her, who are trying to break free.
Works Cited and Consulted
Lipman-Blumen, Jean. Gender Roles and Power. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1984.
Mitchell, Weir S. "Wear and Tear, or Hints for the Overworked." Charlotte Perkins Gilman: "The Yellow Wallpaper." Ed. Dale M. Bauer. Boston: Belford Books, 1998. 134-141.
Papke, Mary E. Verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton. New York: Greenwood P, 1995.
Roland, Alan, and Barbara Harris. Career and Motherhood: Struggles for a New Identity. New York: Human Sciences P, 1979.
Welter, Barbara. "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860." The American Family in Social Historical Perspective. Ed. Michael Gordon. New York: St. Martin's P, 1978. 373-392.
... around famous band. They were an icon to the U.S by trying to send a message in their music that says drugs aren't bad, to the people. Jerry Garcia was a main part in this band and they wouldn't have been this successful without him. The Grateful Dead made rock and roll history from all of these points.
Papke, Mary E. Verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton. New York: Greenwood P, 1995.
In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator weaves a tale of a woman with deep seeded feelings of depression. Her husband, a physician, takes her to a house for a span of three months where he puts her in a room to recuperate. That “recuperation” becomes her nemesis. She is so fixated on the “yellow wallpaper” that it seems to serve as the definition of her bondage. She gradually over time begins to realize what the wallpaper seems to represents and goes about plotting ways to overcome it. In a discussion concerning the wallpaper she states, “If only that top pattern could be gotten off from the under one! I mean to try it, little by little.” “There are only two more days to get this paper off, and I believe John is beginning to notice. I don’t like the look in his eyes.”
Papke, Mary E. Verging on the Abyss: The Social Fiction of Kate Chopin and Edith Wharton. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1990.
"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a self-told story about a woman who approaches insanity. The story examines the change in the protagonist's character over three months of her seclusion in a room with yellow wallpaper and examines how she deals with her "disease." Since the story is written from a feminist perspective, it becomes evident that the story focuses on the effect of the society's structure on women and how society's values destruct women's individuality. In "Yellow Wallpaper," heroine's attempt to free her own individuality leads to mental breakdown.
ingredient of hip hop music, has brought this genre music to the top; attracting and influencing many
The woman in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is slowly deteriorating in mental state. When she first moves into the room in the old house, the wallpaper intrigues her. Its pattern entrances her and makes her wonder about its makeup. But slowly her obsession with the wallpaper grows, taking over all of her time. She starts to see the pattern moving, and imagines it to be a woman trapped behind the wallpaper. The total deterioration of her sanity is reached when she becomes the woman she imagined in the wallpaper and begins creeping around the room.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper” the narrator describes things in the room, which in way, is a symbol of male dominance in the story. The main symbolism in the story is the wallpaper. For example the horrid yellow that is on the walls represents her “illness” or depression issues diagnosed by her husband. However, the vulgar yellow wallpaper pattern shows the restrictions the narrator believed she was enforced too. During her time in the room the narrator creates an imaginative woman inside the wallpaper representing her and other women in society who are also trapped by the male-centric society. The woman in the wallpaper is trapped behind bars and shakes them violently as the narrator explains to escape from them.
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).
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.
“Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman was analyzed by many perspective readers and writers. In my research paper I analyzed work by Ann Oakley and Karen Ford. These two authors had similar but yet different arguments. During my review process on both articles, I found that there can be many interpretations of any literary work. When you typically see topics written about women, you tend to see biased explanations. Reading these from a female standpoint you would go on to assume the writer will only defend what is morally right.
Welter, Barbara. "The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860" chap. in Dimity Convictions: The American Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1976.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story that deals with many different issues that woman in the 19th century had to deal with on a daily basis. Some of these issues were within their control, but many of them were outside of the realm of control for women. The main point that I will focus on is how restricted societal roles can cause insanity. I will do this by deciphering the meaning of the "yellow wallpaper" and its symbolism. In my opinion, I believe that once we get a better understanding of the author's interest in this subject area and get a feel for life in the 19th century, then we will have a better understanding of the story.
Welter, Barabara. (Summer, 1966). The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820-1860. American Quarterly. Vol. 18, No. 2, Part 1, pp. 151-174
People are surrounded by music every day of their lives. They hear it in their homes, on the radio on their way to work; some people have even caught themselves humming the tune of their favorite song to themselves. But how many people actually listen and not just hear the music they are listening to? Teens in particular don’t realize the message behind the music they are quoting the lyrics to, or the effect it has on them. In today’s culture where rap music has become increasingly popular, many teens aren’t realizing what they are listening to. A lot of teens would argue that the music they listen to has no effect on them, but they are wrong. Rap music, especially, has had a major impact on teenagers in today’s society.