Mental health, especially in women, was ignored and regarded to as a temporary “nervousness” that can easily be cured with rest. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a young woman suffering from depression and anxiety when she visited a specialist and was told that her nervousness could be easily solved with a “rest cure”. This misguided advice inspired her to write “The Yellow Wallpaper” which follows the story of a young woman whose husband disregards her anxiety and depression as “nervousness” and leaves her for several weeks alone in a room to “rest”. His ignorance demonstrates the gender dominance in their relationship, as well as the class structure which is presented because of John’s education and career. The narrator eventually has an extreme …show more content…
“[The house] is quite alone standing well back from the road, quite three miles from the village… there are hedges and walls and gates that lock, and lots of separate little houses for the gardeners and people." Overall, it is a very isolated place that is far from the road, three miles from any society, and contains many “locks” and “separate houses”. The house’s physical set-up mirrors the narrator's emotional position: isolated and restricted. This isolation is encouraged by John, who is a high ranking physician and says that he wants the best for her, but makes every decision regarding her life, including where she can live and go, while also disregarding her illness. “There is nothing so dangerous, so fascinating, to a temperament like yours. It is a false and foolish fancy. Can you not trust me as a physician when I tell you so?" This overlooking and confinement are reflected when she begins to see a women trapped behind the wallpaper in her room. The woman whom the narrator imagines behind the wallpaper in a direct embodiment of the metaphorical restriction. Since the narrator is not permitted to leave, and also not able to write and be creative, her mind uses the paper as a creative outlet for her imagination in order to escape the confinement and restrictions set in place by her
The narrator expresses her feeling of imprisonment when she is reminiscing the night before. She explains how she had seen strange things on the wallpaper when the moonlight creeps in the window and reflects upon the wallpaper. She expresses the creepy feeling when she tells us that “the faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (Gilman 234). The narrator also explains at the end of the short story that the yellow paper symbolized a jail cell for her. When she tears off most of the wallpaper in the nursery, she exclaimed, “And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can’t put me back” (Gilman 237).
As she is getting closer and closer revealing the meaning of the wallpaper, she finds out a disturbing truth of her life which is similar to the figure in the wallpaper. She is simultaneously jealous of the secret “ there are things in that wallpaper that nobody knows but me”(pg 553), and frightened of what it seems to imply. Also the narrator tries to deny her growing insight “the dim shapes get clearer every day”(pg 553), but she is powerless to extricate herself. Small wonder that the woman she sees is always “stooping down and creeping about”(pg 553). Like the narrator herself, she is trapped within a suffocating domestic “pattern” from which no escape is possible.
In “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Charlotte Perkins Stenson shows how Jane, an already ill woman, begins to become even more psychologically weakened due to solitary confinement. This story signifies how Charlotte Perkins Stenson, herself, was actually subjected to the slow departure of her own mental health. It allows us to view how isolation can inescapably drive a person to a certain breaking point and into a downward spiral that can ultimately end in lunacy. The story starts off sounding sweet and innocent enough.
26 June 2017 Melissa E. Barth article “The Yellow Wallpaper Masterplots: Short Story Series” focuses mainly around the themes and meanings of the story “The Yellow Wallpaper”. This source was obtained from a reliable source, Literary Reference Center. On her article, Melissa E. Barth states,”The Yellow Wallpaper” is partly autobiographical. Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote it after she fled from her husband with her infant daughter to California.”
Even though she will well aware that her husband, sister and doctor find it a un- likely cure and are against it. We are also to that the narrator tries to cope with her problems as well. Unlike John, who simply ignores his obstacles, the narrator descends into a sense of imagination to help mentally heal herself. The narrator becomes almost compulsively obsessed with the idea of freeing the women behind the bars of the yellow wallpaper. She says, “There are things in that paper which nobody knows but me, or ever will.
He wants her to take a room upstairs, it was a nursery, then a playroom it has windows with bars on each wall that look out in every direction. She describes the walls as having repellant ghastly unclean yellow faded wallpaper that has been torn and shredded in patches. She stays in that dreary room alone most of the time, as John is away most the day and even the night at times. , she also talks briefly about a baby that she can’t be with an it makes her nervous It’s thought that this leads to her being lonely and depressed.
The overall obsession with analyzing the wallpaper reveals a sense of desire for higher intellectual understanding. Despite her mental state and her confinement, as the narrator moves farther from reality, she gains more clarity about her
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).
The Yellow Wallpaper Literary Analysis Essay Identity is key to the one who seizes it. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator has an identity that the author demonstrates. The narrator has an internal battle within herself, that may express depression or a severe mental illness. The narrator shows identity from her actions, reactions, thoughts, and expectations.
Secondly, throughout the story, the narrator describes seeing an evolving woman trapped inside of the wall. Although readers can assume that this woman is merely a product of the narrator’s mind, the woman can also be seen as a symbol of the narrator and her feelings of being trapped. Eventually, the woman in the wall aids the narrator in her escape. In conclusion, many elements of the narrator’s increasing madness throughout The Yellow Wallpaper contributed to her freedom from the confines of the room, the confines of society, and the confines of her
However, in stories such as “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator’s point of view is what truly helps define the setting and symbolism. Without the narrator’s distinct point of view on how she
“I’ve got out at last. And I’ve pulled off most of the paper, so you can never put me back!” The narrator is trapped, and when she peels off the wallpaper she is stepping out to
Charlotte Perkins Gilman also known as the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper uses imagery in this book. As a women in the 1980’s many women had very to little power or approbation to the society. During this time many women were noted to have an illness known as ¨Nervous Disorders¨, which is mentioned in the book by the narrator. Gilmans purpose of The Yellow Wallpaper was to free women from fostering their intelligence, emotional growth, and domestic servitude during this era of struggling women.
The Culture of The Yellow Wallpaper Through her many stories, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, developed the notion of how being a strong independent woman can be inspirational to all. The expression of her personal feelings and opinions behind the guise of a seemingly fictional story brings new life to the story itself. During the nineteenth century, there were many stereotypes of what was expected from women. In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” Gilman composes the story of a woman who suffers from postpartum depression and finds an infatuation with a wall covered with yellow wallpaper.
Enclosed to the four wall of this “big” room, the narrator says “the paint and paper look as if a boy’s school had used it” because “it is stripped off” indicating that males have attempted to distort women’s truth but somehow did not accomplish distorting the entire truth (Perkins Gilman, 43). When the narrator finally looked at the wall and the paint and paper on it, she was disgusted at the sight. The yellow wallpaper, she penned, secretly against the will of men, committed artistic sin and had lame uncertain curves that suddenly committed suicide when you followed them for a little distance. The narrator is forced to express her discomfort with the image to her husband, he sees it as an “excited fancy” that is provoked by the “imaginative power and habit of story making” by “a nervous weakness” like hers (Perkins Gilman, 46). Essentially, he believes that her sickness is worsening and the depth of her disease is the cause of the unexpected paranoia.