The Yellow Woman Analysis

Ethan Frome and “The Yellow Wallpaper both have women as their main characters in the stories. In Ethan Frome the women’s names are Zeena Frome and Mattie Silver. In “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the women’s names are Jennie, Mary, and the anonymous narrator. Each of the characters have their own unique traits and different personalities, but they also have many similarities. Each of the women play very big roles in their stories, and they are portrayed in different ways.

Gloria Anzaldúa’s “La Prieta” tell her struggles with identity by talking about prejudices she dealt with while growing up. These prejudices, such as colorism, sexism, and heteronormativity, were not only held by people outside her social groups but within them as well. Anzaldúa goes on to explain the way identity is formed by intersecting factors and not only one aspect of someone’s life therefore denying one factor of identity can cause isolation and self-hatred.

In “Wildwood”, Junot Diaz presents a troubled teenager by the name Lola to have distinct conflicting values with her mother. Her mother has controversial Dominican norms and responsibilities. These norms are not what Lola wants to be. Her mother soon gets sick and increases Lola’s feelings to take action on how she wants to live her life. When Lola and her mom continue to carry their abusive conflict, Lola decides to run away to Wildwood. Lola does this because she is a lost soul with no foundation of who she really is. As she runs away from her “Domincaness” that she desperately needed change from, her mother finds her in Wildwood and returns her to the origin of a “perfect Dominican daughter” which is the Dominican Republic. Once there she

“The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story that was written in first person during 1892. This story depicts society’s attitude towards women with a mental illness at that time. Ultimately, the story shows how women were treated in the 19th century. “And it is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern. I don’t like it a bit. I wonder— I begin to think—I wish John would take me away from here!” (231). Shortly after the narrator who remains unnamed and her husband John rented an old mansion, the narrator encountered a state of delusion in the wallpaper that surrounded her. In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper,” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator develops a peculiar relationship with the wallpaper; the author’s use of allusion, symbolism, and personification identifies the existence of the woman’s illness.

The narrator is a woman who is imaginative trying to make her mind think and realize the meaning of the yellow wallpaper. She describes the wallpaper as, “repellant, almost revolting; smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow turning sunlight” (Gilman 641). This specific wallpaper makes the narrator feel a certain way. At first, she does not like the color or how it looks. But then not having anything else to do in the room, she starts examining the wallpaper. “The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out” (Gilman 652). The narrator can see a person, the person can be representing herself. She feels trapped and may be losing her mind. She can see woman trapped behind the wall and not be able to escape from it. The narrator describes it in detail that it seems like she is talking about herself going through all this emotionally and physically.

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.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Kate Chopin are two of the many famous short story writers. Charlotte Perkins is the author of “The Yellow Wallpaper”, which was written in 1899. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a short story about a woman inclination into madness for postpartum depression while being treated by her husband, John while living in their summer mansion. The woman is locked into a nursery by her husband, which is covered in yellow wallpaper. “So we took the nursery at the top of the house.” (Page 2) The woman thinks she is seeing women trapped behind the yellow wallpaper of the room While thinking she is one of those women trapped. Kate Chopin is the author of “The Story of an Hour” which is about a woman who diagnosed with heart trouble

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a martyr is a “person who sacrifices something of great value and especially life itself for the sake of principle” and in Julia Alvarez’s novel In the Time of the Butterflies, no one encompasess this more than the book’s four protagonists—Dedé, Minerva, María Teresa, and Patria—the Mirabal sisters. Known as Las Mariposas, the Butterflies, these women suffered for the right to pursue freedom in a revolution against the Dominican Republic's oppressive dictator Rafael Trujillo. In their revolutionary efforts, these remarkable sisters have become icons in the public eye of the DR, and have been heralded as great leaders for their bravery and hope despite enduring such tortures as imprisonment and bombings.

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. Similar to this is the story of Edna in the novel ‘The Awakening’ by Kate Chopin. This story highlights the life of a woman who is trying to gain independence in a trapped society where it is impossible for women in that type of culture to be free. Society plays a major role in her story as the society oppresses her in such a way that results in a tragic ending.

The woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” becomes ill after she has her first child, a daughter named Katharine. In the text it says, “…and am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again.” (Gilman 1670). She would probably be diagnosed with postpartum depression in today’s world. She is prescribed to not do any work until she feels better. In actuality, this only causes the woman to act more strangely. The significance of the color yellow in the story is that yellow represents sickness. The woman drives herself crazy by staring at the yellow wallpaper.

Márquez’s novella ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’ tells the story of Santiago Nasar’s murder. It is based on the real-life incident that occurred in the 1950s in a small Colombian town, Sucre. Cayetano Gentile was murdered by the brothers of Margarita Chica for having allegedly stolen her virginity. This was revealed when she was returned to her family after her newlywed husband had discovered that she wasn’t a Virgin. In his novella, Márquez displays the influence of the social mores and shows how these supersede the law of the statute books and the authority of Catholicism, which was otherwise so important and therefore how these social mores affect the characters and their actions. Usually, it is factors like Law and Religion that govern

I found “The Rudy Elmenhurst Story” by Julia Alvarez to be an extremely non-traditional written piece. For me it a confusing read for several reasons. First, The story is written in reverse order. The story begins with Yolanda as an adult and moves backward in time. Second, the story is told through narrators in different perspectives. The author shifts the story back to a first person narrator to the individual to whom the chapter is devoted.

The yellow wallpaper is not just the dreadful décor the narrator is stuck within the story but the most important symbol in the story. It symbolizes how women were not allowed to change or free to make their own decisions. The narrator once said that the wallpaper "sticks horribly and the pattern just enjoys it" (Gilman). She felt like the wallpaper stuck and not able to succumb to change she demonstrates this as well when she says "The faint figure behind seemed to shake the pattern, just as if she wanted to get out" (Gilman). The narrator herself became the women she saw in the wallpaper that she felt trapped in a life without change which manifested itself into the wallpaper further increasing the symbolism and importance of yellow wallpaper.

She identified the yellow wallpaper as a metaphor for women’s discourse. The narrator’s underlying feelings of confusion, depression, and frustration was covered by the yellow wallpaper which she rips from the walls at the very end to reveal “what is elsewhere kept hidden and embodies patterns that the patriarchal order ignores, suppresses, fears as grotesque or fails to perceive at all” (35). The yellow wallpaper is interpreted as the conflict of gender inequality and the struggles of women in a patriarchal society. The imagery reflects on how women feel toward sexual inequality and the situation with

Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a first-person written feminist short story that critiques and condemns the nineteenth-century American male attitude towards women and their physical as well as mental health issues. In the short story, Perkins Gilman juxtaposes universal gender perspectives of women with hysterical tendencies using the effects of gradually accumulating levels of solitary confinement; a haunted house, nursery, and the yellow wallpaper to highlight the American culture of inherited oblivious misogyny and promote the equality of sexes.