In conclusion, John is the one to blame for the condition of the narrator. He first rents a house for both of them and then he isolates her and doesn 't let her do anything. Then John starts to treat her like a child making her think she 's a child. Lastly he puts her in a room by herself with a yellow wallpaper that has a pattern. Since she didn 't have anything to do she decides to figure out the pattern and throughout the story the wallpaper makes her go crazy.
The main conflict the narrator encounters is being torn between reality, which is the world outside the room, and understanding herself. Jane establishes the room as a shield. The narrator refuses to acknowledge everything outside, like her relationship and child, and constructs a safety zone. Her restriction for writing, placed by her husband, also inhibits her imagination. In contrast, her rebellion in both writing and fantasizing further her descent into madness.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper is a story about a woman’s struggle to be heard in a society working against her. The narrator has been diagnosed with “nervous depression” (648), and her physician husband decides to take her to a mansion to help her recover; her recovery also involves not participating in any activity that might stimulate her mind, like writing. The narrator describes the house as having “hedges and walls and gates that lock” (648), and the room she has to stay in has bars on the windows, almost like a prison. The narrator also points out the hideous wallpaper, and makes many references to it throughout the story.
The yellow wallpaper could be symbolic to the narrator because it resembles bars that confine her from social interaction and free thinking. Eventually this drives the narrator mad beyond repair and the story ends there. A major theme of this story is how culture at the time restricted women’s free thinking and acting capabilities to a point where they are just meant for a few purposes. Women were commonly suppressed during this time almost as if they were obedient children. This can be seen in another example in the story with John’s sister, who despite seeing that the narrator’s condition wasn’t getting better from the treatment being given, still chose to be obedient to
She believes that Louise is very fragile because of her heart condition. As a result, she gently informs Louise of her husband’s death. When Louise locks herself in her bedroom, Josephine shows concern and worry for Louise because she believes she will make herself ill from extreme grief and keeping to herself. Josephine assumes Louise is highly emotional and distraught is reflective of typical Victorian female views on how women react and feel when faced with tragic news, especially news about the death of a husband.
Euripides poem Medea opens up with conflict. The nurse is outside telling what happened in between Jason and Medea, but also foreshadowing. She constantly said how Medea shouldn 't have help him find the golden fleece. Medea just stayed in the house in isolated with rage not wanting to see her children. “Her rage will not let up, I know, until she lashes out at someone” (Line 101)
The wife started to imagine seeing a lady in the wallpaper who wanted to break the bars so they could be free. In an effort to set the lady free from the wallpaper, the wife ripped the wallpaper off the wall. Unfortunately, ripping the wallpaper down did not free the lady from the wallpaper. The wife digressed to the state of being mentally insane. Gilman presented this story in a unique way because it contained a deeper explanation of how women were treated in the nineteenth century and how their mistreatment was accepted by society.
The narrator’s illness is caused by control issues, in turn, cause her to seek out a sense of true self. The fact that John ignores his wife’s feelings makes her illness worse. From John’s perspective, keeping his wife in the ugly, scary, barred room seems okay. During the time when the story takes place is a time when men dominated women.
The Yellow Wallpaper narrator 's perspective on the wallpaper is that the wallpaper is so intriguing as it keeps changing. The lady in the wallpaper is herself being trapped in this house. The yellow wallpaper is yellow because of her depression throughout this story and partially the alcoholic recovery syndrome known as delirium tremens or confusion of trying to live without alcohol as a way to escape life, alcohol can turn things yellow such as teeth even paper but mostly is is a self reflection of her depression of not being able to see her newborn child.. I can 't exactly remember where I read that I can 't find it but I know she says something of a newborn son...
The main reason for her madness is her living environment, loneliness and the frightening yellow wallpaper. She lives in a house where she is defined as a haunted house, and the layout of the house makes her feeling uncomfortable. As what she describes: “a haunted house” (647), her first feeling of this mansion is scary rather than enjoying, while later one, she says, “ I should hate it myself if I had to live in this room for long.” (Gilman, 649) It can be seen that she is extremely reluctant to live in this place. However, the yellow wallpaper is the critical factor that breaks her logic, which directly leads to her mental disorder, “ A smoldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight.”
The heavy bedstead, which was nailed to the ground, was another feature that represents the room as a jail cell. Therefore, the room that she is prisoned shows how the madness benefited her to gain control and achieve a way to escape her confinement. In conclusion, the diverse literature 's do share a common theme that shows women fighting to overcome societal expectations due to the female gender not valued as thinkers capable of being their equals and mental illness can be caused by society’s stereotypical
Restricted in movement and stripped of her opinion by her husband, the narrator forms an obsession with the obscure background pattern that “skulks behind that silly and conspicuous front design” (80) on the wallpaper. As the dim shapes become more distinct, she ultimately deciphers the true figure to be a woman. This is a metaphor for the realization of her mental and physical entrapment as she proceeds into a state of insanity. The intensive need for helping the woman escape reflects the need for her own liberation. As the woman quickly flees upon her release, the narrator refuses to follow as she is so unaccustomed to the “green instead of yellow” (89).
In The Yellow Wallpaper a dangerous effect of complete isolation is paranoia. It is linked in with the obsession of the wallpaper as the narrator does not want anyone else becoming interested in it. The narrator wants the wallpaper all to herself to study and becomes suspicious of John and Jennie. She claims to have “caught [John] several times looking at the wallpaper” and “caught Jennie with her hand on it” (162). This effect of isolation is dangerous because the narrator locks herself in her room and throws the key out of the window in order to free the women who are trapped in the wallpaper.
"The Yellow Wallpaper" is about a lady made crazy by post pregnancy anxiety and a hazardous treatment. However,, an examination of the protagonist’s portrayal shows that the story is generally about character. The protagonist’s projection of a fanciful lady, which at first is just her shadow, against the bars of the wallpaper shows her personality, disguising the contention she is dealing with and in the end prompting the entire breakdown of the limits of her character and that of her shadow. Continually alone and not allowed to abandon her room, the absence of something to involve her time makes the protagonist very confused. With blocked windows, the room is very similar to a jail.
Angelina stated that she considers herself a happy person. She indicated that she becomes sad when she things about her mother and father not getting along. Angelina reported that she does not feel comfortable telling her father that his “yelling” makes her sad. She indicated that she cannot talk to her father because he becomes mean and “doesn’t understand her”.