“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in 1892. The story is told through a series of journal entries by a woman diagnosed with a “nervous condition”. The entries take place during her “rest treatment” prescribed by her physician (who is also her husband). Gilman uses her own experiences with the rest treatment to flawlessly animate the fall to madness. She uses an array of figurative language, an alluring mood, and a first person point of view to entirely capture the reader. The Yellow Wallpaper has many examples of figurative language. Some more direct and some subtle. One of the more subtle metaphors is the bed; the bed is bolted/chained to the floor which represents her feeling tied down by her “mental condition”. “The ghost floated like a dragonfly during the sunrise”. This quote is a direct simile for the ghost but, the ghost also is a symbol of the narrators madness. From the very beginning the story exhibits an eerie and ominous mood. The narrator, a woman suffering from post-partum depression, is kept locked in a room and not allowed to see her child. People brush her off and do not take her seriously. She is doomed from the start. The narrator is off set by the house she is staying in and …show more content…
This view provides drama and suspense. Is there really a woman sneaking around outside? Or stuck in the wallpaper? Probably not which makes the narrator untrustworthy to the reader. Her opinions and statements cannot be taken as fact thus creating suspense. The reader knows how the world seems to the narrator but her views are skewed and reader cannot accurately gauge what is really happening. The narrator speaks of “the streak along the wall” and the bed posts being “chewed on”. She knows not what has caused it and thus neither does the reader. In a later reveal it is discovered that both happenings were of the narrators own
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Show MoreTo begin with, “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, also went through postpartum depression. This story, is about a woman who has gone insane by post-partum depression and a dangerous treatment. On the other hand, an analysis of the mother’s character discloses that this story is basically about
Her mind was still quite uneasy about the shadows. “I don’t like to LOOK out of the windows even - there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast (Gilman 13). In her twisted fantasy these people have been weaving in and out of the walls all summer. Her creativity runs her mind so ragged it kills
Intellectual Relief in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” The Yellow Wallpaper presents the story of a woman’s descent into madness. The narrator’s declining mental health is reflected through the characteristics of the house she is dwells in and her husband, while trying to protect her, is actually damaging her. The narrator of the story goes with her husband to stay in a colonial mansion for the summer.
Throughout the story the narrator begins to form an odd infatuation with the yellow wallpaper that decorates the room she lives in. A first, the fixation is innocent, then eventually metaphors into an unhealthy obsession with what she believes is a reflection of her own feelings and situation. Just after the narrator resolves that no one but she can figure out the wallpaper, she states “Life is very much more exciting now than it used to be” (Gilman, 441). This captures one of the exceptional qualities of The Yellow Wall-Paper: Mrs. Gilman’s imagination and creative writing ability.
At first the woman believes her husband has taken her to a quiet country home to recover. Left alone in her room, she takes particular notice of the dingy yellow wallpaper. As time goes on it becomes obvious to the reader that the wallpaper is a metaphor for her restrictions and becomes symbolic of her isolation and mental deterioration. She begins to see herself trapped in the wallpaper as "a strange, provoking, formless sort of figure that seems to skulk about behind that silly and conspicuous front design. "
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
The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman often discussed for its biographical critic on the way women, but especially those suffering from mental illnesses profiled by 19th century physicians as "women's diseases", have been treated in society at the end of the 19th century (Teichler 1984: 61, Oakley 1997: 29). In order to cure the female main character of her hysterical tendencies--a status she was diagnosed with after the birth of her son--she has been confined to the former nursery in the family's house, and undergoes a treatment in which she is forced to avoid all forms of stimuli, excitement, or activity (Gilman 1997: 1-15.). One of the main objects she interacts with during her isolation period, besides the nailed down bed and her hidden journal, is the yellow wallpaper with which the former nursery is papered (Gilman 1997: 1-15.).
In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the setting symbolizes much more than what appears to the reader in plain view. The story starts off with what seems to be a normal woman writing journal entries as she recovers from her post-mortem depression. As the story goes on, the reader soon realizes that the narrator is not as normal as once thought. She soon turns into a maniac with obsessive thoughts on the brink of insanity. As the narrator became manic, the setting becomes with manic along with her.
Paula A. Treichler from the University of Illinois analyzes “The Yellow Wallpaper” and its effects of the diagnosis given to the main character effectively in her article “Escaping the Sentence: Diagnosis and Discourse in ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’”. In her article, Treichler emphasizes the reasons why the main character was lead to believe her diagnosis from her husband and the other contributing factors that played a role in her hysteria, such as lack of social interaction and confinement. In the introduction to her article, Treichler gives the background of the story and hits on every area of importance. The diagnosis made by the narrator 's husband is highlighted by Treichler in her opening paragraph to illustrate the significance and informality of the diagnosis and its unreliability.
"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.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ironic short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, describes how a depressed woman, who lives in an aristocratic society, is indirectly effected by a wallpaper that reflects her lifestyle. The point of view of the short story is first person. This is essential to know because readers are able to read the narrators thoughts and why the character take necessary actions toward certain situations. In the beginning of the story, the woman describes her condition.
She imagines a woman trapped within the yellow wallpaper
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator is suffering from postpartum depression. The narrator 's husband John, who also happens to be her physician, prescribes the rest cure to help lift his wife of her depressive state and ultimately heal her depression. However, the rest cure does not allow the narrator to experience any mental stimulation. Therefore, to manage her boredom the narrator begins obsessing over the pattern of the yellow wallpaper. After analyzing the pattern for awhile, the narrator witnesses a woman trapped behind bars.
The woman in the wallpaper reflects the narrator because she is trapped, only the narrator can see her, John wishes them to stay as they are, and she wants to be free. The narrator and the woman are trapped by the yellow wallpaper. The narrator refers that in the night the wallpaper is just barred trapping the woman inside of it. “At night in any kind of light, in the twilight, candlelight, lamplight, and worst of all by moonlight, it becomes bars!
She begins to see strangles heads in the wallpaper, which can be a symbolic representation of the patriarchal order that stifled women. The bars on the wallpaper that cage the imaginary women are a reflection of her own situation where she is confined in the old mansion. Even the smell of the wallpaper, which she describes as being ‘yellow’ and present throughout the house, is a reflection of the mental repression that is always present in her life. She is so consumed by the smell that she thinks about burning the old mansion just to cover it