Throughout history, race and sex had always been topics of discussion among people, and many have been poorly treated based on their color and sex rather than their actions. The Yellow Wallpaper is not an exception to this, as describes the oppression society gives to women around the Victorian Era. The narrator, who is never truly mentioned by name, has been trapped on the top floor of a mansion in a nursery-like room where she can only sleep and eat. She keeps a journal around and writes down whenever she is alone to prevent her husband from taking her only source of entertainment away since at the time women could not write nor be smarter than men. John believes, because he is the best physician in the county, that he knows exactly what …show more content…
However, his wife continue to write, stating that each time she does, she gets extremely tired. The narrator kept sleeping during the day and staying all night awake looking, smelling, hearing and touching the yellow wallpaper that once disturbed her, now fascinated her. Soon, the narrator begun to write smaller sentences and little pieces instead of the big chunks of writing that she did the first day she arrived at the house, further showing her descent to madness. At the end of the novel, she peels off the wallpaper, to release the woman that had been trapped behind those bars and realising her into society. This symbolizes her realization of being trapped for so long, and her desire now to free herself. However, because society is cruel and who never approve of a woman so independent, she creeps around the room to hide her escape. When John arrives at the nursery-like room, he sees what has become of his wife. His wife explains she has ‘gotten out, in spite of you and Jane,’ before John faints and his wife continues to creep around the room, trying her best not to step on the fallen body. In conclusion, the narrator of the Yellow Wallpaper, is what happened to a woman in an oppressed society. Her writing style and size decreased as she slowly got overtaken by the wallpaper, symbolizing going into madness. At the end of the story, she destroys the wallpaper, releasing the woman that was once oppressed in society, symbolizing that now she can fully be herself and live a normal life, free from everyone that locked her away. When John sees what has become of his wife, he faints, as the narrator continues to creep around the
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Show MoreGilman shows the progression of the main character’s insanity through the woman in the wallpaper, John, and the bed. Like most individuals, the narrator in “The Yellow Wallpaper” gradually shows increased symptoms of insanity. She begins the summer as a sane individual. As time progresses, she starts acting
The woman in the wallpaper is trapped just like she is. The narrator creates a figure that she could relate to and then spends all her time focused on the figure and trying to figure out how to help the woman in the wallpaper escape her cell. As the story continues and she remains isolated, it is obvious Jane views herself as the woman inside the wallpaper. As a result of being trapped in her room, she begins to lose her sanity. She believes she is trapped in the wallpaper and must escape its holds.
(99). The woman on the floor trying to take the wallpaper down would not let her husband in as he tried to knock the door down, but she does not realize she is doing it to herself. For example, Catherine Golden states in her article that, “The narrator seems detached from the bits of wallpaper on the floor next to her and John wallpaper fragments that could be read as a literal representation of the source of her insanity. The narrator’s hallucinations and action of tearing down the wallpaper to free the woman trapped behind the wallpaper pattern condemn her to madness” (60).
This differs greatly from Jane, who begins to sympathize with the plight of all domestic women through her experience with the woman behind the yellow wallpaper. Although she initially frowned upon the woman’s efforts to escape, the more her mental health deteriorated, the more she began to relate her plight to that of the trapped woman, both prisoners desperate for escape. With her newfound revelation, she sought to save the trapped woman from her prison, subconsciously freeing herself in the process. “As soon as it was moonlight and that poor thing began to crawl and shake the pattern, I got up and ran to help her…I wonder if they all came out of that wallpaper as I did?… “I’ve got out at last,” said I, “in spite of you and Jane!
Throughout the generation, women have always been trapped in some way or another. In the short story, ‘The Yellow Wall-Paper’ and the novel ‘The Awakening’ highlights the struggle of women in the late 1800’s and the early 1900s in society. The Yellow wallpaper is a short story about women giving birth and being imprisoned in a room with a weird view of the yellow wall-paper. This resulted in her hallucination lead to the development of mental illness. By the end of the story, she rips off the yellow wallpaper and kills her husband.
John constantly tries to "fix" the narrator by giving her "phosphates or phosphites - whichever it is, and tonics, and journey's, and air, and exercise" as well as forbidding her to work until she is well again. The narrator feels depressed and alone, especially since her child has been taken away from her and everybody is too focused on "fixing" her to see the problems she is dealing with. This causes her to form an attachment to the yellow wallpaper plastered around her room as her mental state deteriorates. As her state of mind worsens, she begins to think that she is seeing a woman trapped in the wallpaper. The narrator believes that the wallpaper pattern changes because the trapped woman shakes the walls and creeps around the room over and over, when in reality, it is the narrator who is continuously crawling around the room, scraping the wallpaper from the walls.
The Struggle of Many Women The story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Stetson, reflects the life of many women during the difficult times they were living in. The narrator can relate to many people during the Victorian age where the woman’s role was to be a wife and a mother only. The narrator is a woman who is imaginative and is dissociated from herself and from the world.
At the beginning of the short story Jane absolutely hates the wallpaper in her bedroom, but at the end Jane claims that she is “getting really fond of the room in spite of the wallpaper.” (page ) At the beginning of the story Jane is aggravated at John and after John’s treatment she describes him as “so wise” (page ) and “loving [her] so.” (page ) Throughout the “Yellow Wallpaper” John consistently makes Jane’s condition worse and worse until she finally has a mental breakdown.
As the narrator becomes more fascinated with the wallpaper she moves progressively away from her normal day-to-day routines and lifestyle. When the narrator finally recognizes herself as the woman trapped in the wallpaper she screams at her husband "I 've got out at last," (Gilman 656) "you can 't put me back" (Gilman 656). She realizes woman are forced to hide behind the internal patterns of their lives and they need that she needs to be
As this progresses, the woman starts to go mad from ignorance and starts to believe there is someone behind the Wallpaper. In her room, the narrator starts to obsess over the Wallpaper. The Wallpaper symbolizes women starting to realize how unfair they were treated and how responded to this. As the women’s illness keeps getting subdued by her husband, she starts to go mad and the wallpaper demonstrates this. In the third entry of her diary she says, “Of
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a short story told through diary entries of a woman who suffers from postpartum depression. The narrator, whose name is never mentioned, becomes obsessed with the ugly yellow wallpaper in the summer home her husband rented for them. While at the home the Narrator studies the wallpaper and starts to believe there is a woman in the wallpaper. Her obsession with the wallpaper slowly makes her mental state deteriorate. Throughout The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses many literary devices such as symbolism, personification and imagery to help convey her message and get it across to the reader.
Only the charwoman goes near him. In The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator feels trapped by her husband and physician, John, because he is controlling and believes he knows what is best for her. The woman that the narrator sees in the wallpaper is eventually revealed to be
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
It is a story that could actually happen. In the story, Jane expresses concerns about her mental health to her husband, John, a doctor, who through good intentions and believing that he is doing the right thing, requires that his wife stays in bed all the time, and not do any of the things she would normally or would like to do. Due to being bed ridden, Jane becomes worse until she reached the limit and goes crazy. John’s behavior and decisions at this time were considered to be completely normal. The Yellow Wallpaper is considered to fall in the genre of realism because it represents the way life was for women during the nineteenth century.
However as time moves on, and the woman in the wallpaper becomes more and more real to her, it’s clear that her mental state is rapidly depleting. Her first description of a figure in the wallpaper came when she stated that the wallpaper had a “recurrent spot where the pattern lolls like a broken neck and two bulbous eyes stare at you upside down” (219). By the time the story ends, the narrator had turned into the