The ugliness of the yellow wallpaper can be compared to the ugliness of her life at the time of the story, the way her husband doubts her illness and her not being able to break free from his grip. The nursery symbolizes how women were seen on the same level as children. A woman’s role during this time was one of confinement and the barred windows are symbols of this. The narrator tearing down the yellow wallpaper to find the woman represents her attempt to regain her sanity. The wallpaper is her confinement and by tearing it down she frees herself.
In the poem “Medusa” gender conflict through control is also illustrated when she says: “a suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy”. This depicts that she feels ownership over her husband and wants him to “be terrified” if he does not obey her commands. However, in “Les Grands Seigneurs” the narrator conveys that after she was “wedded, bedded … a toy, a plaything … wife” she is nostalgic for the first three stanzas to how men were towards her before she was married as she is now powerless. We can depict that there was less gender conflict before she was married. Moreover, in “Medusa” powerlessness is also portrayed when she rhetorically questions herself “Wasn’t I beautiful?
Katie Stephens English 1102 Dr. Strickland 9:30 TR Symbolism, Irony, and Theme in “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” tells the story of a husband's attempt to do away with his wife's insanity by keeping her isolated and restrained from expressing herself through writing. Gilman includes an abundance of irony and symbolism to describe the thoughts and actions of the narrator. The author uses these elements to help the reader come to the conclusion that the narrator feels oppressed and controlled along with other women who were felt to be “confined to womanly roles” in society in the 1800s. The theme of the story suggests that women during this time were imprisoned by the male dominated society. There are many uses of irony in “The Yellow Wallpaper.”.
(http://www.zelo.com/firstnames/) It's a bit ironic compared to the Alison in the story, considering she has been having an affair with a man that her husband is renting a room to. The name Alison being given to this character is a cover up of who she truly is; just as she is tricking her husband, she is also tricking readers into thinking she is an honest, noble person. Her name goes to better exemplify how everything about Alison is not what it appears to be. Alison’s relationships with others are very complex. Alison and her husband do not have the typical loving marriage; he is many years her senior and she is basically a trophy wife to him.
Cinthia Lorenzo Mr. Ridings English 1302 13 February 2015 “The Yellow Wallpaper” as a guide to the Injustice of a Women Throughout many centuries women have been fighting for a voice in society. Unfortunately for Charlotte Perkins Gilman, writer of “The Yellow Wallpaper,” women had a limited amount of saying on what was right and wrong. During this Victorian time, men were the strongest and women depended on the men. Gilman expresses the lack of women’s voice during her century by demonstrating the act of women oppression and symbolism to express her message in the story. Initially, Gilman demonstrated the lack of freedom the protagonist has with her husband.
Steinbeck presents the character of Curley’s wife in a complex and complicated manner. Steinbeck uses her as a literary device to show what it was like for a woman in 1920s America during the depression through Curley’s wife. Steinbeck uses Curley’s wife as a vehicle to show the gender prejudice and discrimination a woman had to face. He wanted people to change the way society thought of people such as women by showing that they are actually lonely and vulnerable even if they don’t seem it at first with the use of Curley’s wife and subtle methods as a symbol for women in that era. Steinbeck makes the reader conflicted on how they feel about her throughout the novel until and after her death.
The writer, Charlotte Gilman, presents the negative effects of unequal treatment of the sexes and the cult of true womanhood through fictional narrative – for this reason, The Yellow Wallpaper is regarded as a significant early work of feminist literature. The short story is a series of diary entries from an isolated, and mentally unstable woman who has been enclosed in an upstairs bedroom by her husband, John. Her husband’s motives are to cure her from what he calls a “temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency”.1 This cure was known as The Rest Cure, which was first introduced by Dr Weir Mitchell, who believed that a female suffering from depression was “physically unfit for her duties as a woman”.2 Gilman herself had suffered from depression, in 1886, and was referred to Mitchell where she was forced inactivity. In her autobiography she explains that her condition only improved after abandoning The Rest Cure, and that “the real purpose of the story [The Yellow Wallpaper] was to reach Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and convince him of the error of his ways.”4 Due to Gilman’s personal experiences, The Yellow Wallpaper can be seen as a semi-autobiography. Though Gilman was able to free herself from Mitchell’s cure, the narrator of her novella was not.
Are Louise Mallard and the unnamed narrator of “The Yellow Wallpaper” symbolically the same woman? Wives, who would rather die than continue in the Victorian Era of Matrimony, voice their marriage issue in two poems The Yellow Wallpaper written by Charlotte Gilman’s and Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin. Both women lived in a patriarchal society. A climate that demands women to be completely subservient to their husband’s in marriage. The issue exposes their feeling of imprisonment not freedom.
The metal issues both these females face are perceived from their loved ones as an internal issue that can be easily. In the case of the main character in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” it evidently caused her to fall further into her own train of thought. She feels undermined and underappreciated by her husband, whom diagnosed her with her depression. It is quite clearly stated in the first couple pages of the story, “John is a physician...perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.” “You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do?” He believes he knows what’s best for her as a loving
The very first descriptions illustrate her initial animus by describing it as “one of those sprawling flamboyant patterns committing every artistic sin” (Perkins 41-42). This is significant for it reflects the narrator’s own presence—she is committing an artistic sin during her marriage by having her engaging imagination and her need to compose. Her husband, John, dislikes this, and as a result, the narrator deliberately feels stifled and has to obscure her writing so that her husband will not know. The narrator is characterized as having a nervous state and is overly protected by her