Throughout the text, Gilman attempts to uncover the often disturbing truths that lurk beneath the surface of something seemingly innocent with reference to her own socio-economic philosophy; that is the economics of marriage and the nature of the mentally destructive sub-ordination of women within it. The room in which the narrator is confined proposes problems for her immediately. She instantly recognises that there is ‘something queer’(pg 1) about it and the presence of the bars, rings and it’s nailed down bed besides making it reminiscent of an asylum, give it also a constricting atmosphere which illustrates the physical oppression of women in a broader sense, how married women in the nineteenth century would be part of a domestic, private sphere and the man would be part of a more public sphere, like John who is frequently absent during his wife’s ‘treatment’. By taking into account Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own , we can fully appreciate, as Woolf insists, the importance of a physical and metaphorical space in which to engage with one’s creativity and personality. It is this freedom or ‘room of (her) own’ the narrator is denied as she is prevented from having any say in her physical environment or even how best to channel her anxieties and imaginative urges which ultimately lead to the deterioration of her mental state.
She is a very repressed woman by very domineering her husband. She spends most of her time in her bedroom where there is hideous yellowing wallpaper that becomes her primary focus and is the ultimate cause of her insanity in the end. I
Her mind becomes an abyss of nothingness as she emulates the object she once loathed. Charlotte Perkins’ the yellow wallpaper encounters numerous levels to which it can be read. The most simple being a woman slowly being driven mas. Also showing the social structure of a family and how the male is the dominant being and what he says is expected to be obeyed. The yellow wallpaper can also be read through the eyes of phycology and the making of a mental patient, how a woman locked up and restricted from using her mind is slowly suffocated by her madness.
As previously mentioned she uses the words ill formed and feeble to describe her unfinished writing’s fragility. In line 10, she continues by saying, “thy visage was so irksome in my sight,” to explain the shame and discomfort that she carries with her due to the fact that her “baby” was exposed to the public still so unpolished. She applies the words blemishes, flaw, and hobbling into her diction in order to express her piece as something that is not well put together, and no matter how much she attempts to polish it, she feels as if she has failed at improving it. Lastly, Bradstreet’s characterization of her work comes to life through the evident controlling metaphor of the poem, which is claiming that her writing is her “offspring”. Throughout the entire poem, the controlling metaphor becomes this idea that her writing is her child,
Steinbeck portrays him as paranoid and insecure for which he overcompensates for with aggression. In section 4 we find talking to Crooks, Candy and Lennie, in this section we see a glimpse of her true self, after which she then overcompensates for her vulnerability by threatening to have Crooks lynched. This gives us the impression that she is evil. Finally in section 5 we see the true version of Curley's wife, we learn she has dreams, just like everyone else, and also falls victim to loneliness (another big theme of the novel). In death, we see what she really looks like, innocent and pure.
Compare and Contrast Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” and William Faulkner’s “A Rose for Emily” are two short stories that hold many similarities and differences. Both of these stories are based on women who go from being depressed and lonely to insane. As a girl Emily’s father rejected all of her boyfriends causing her to never marry and become the talk of the town. The narrator of Gilman’s story who suffers from depression is forced to stay in her bedroom where she becomes delusional. Both of these stories portray many similarities and differences in the setting, characterization and symbolism, and most of all, how men have isolated these women from the real world driving them insane.
The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Perkins Gilman is a look into the mental decline, and enlightenment of an anonymous lady. The narrator of this story is an odd character, both losing touch with reality and at the same time gaining greater self-understanding. This paradox is important to understanding the suffering of our narrator. All throughout the story she faces objects, or people, or situations that seam normal at first but that turn out extremely strange. This shows us that the main problem the narrator is faced with is how oppressive her situation is on her personality.
Her use of words in ‘Elm’ is also interesting. “Faults” could be emotional and/or physical and this shows the psychological states explored throughout Sylvia Plath’s work. “Malignity” symbolises evil and the intensity of how disturbed her life was.Another poem by Plath that I found to be personal on an intense and disturbing way was ‘Mirror’. It is clear as Plath looks into the mirror that she is unhappy, watching her age. A mirror never lies, but Plath cannot find solace in what she sees.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote a piece named “The Yellow Wallpaper”, where the narrator of the story is vividly entangled in her imagination causing her artistic impulses to consume her emotions. She is a “closet psychotic” as she does not disclose this infatuation of the yellow wallpaper to anyone around her. Charlotte Perkins Gilman writes a complex story where the narrator is trapped in her secret obsession of unraveling what’s inside this “yellow wallpaper”, which then drives her imaginative creativity, into insanity. The narrator begins by informing the reader how she and her family have recently started to stay in a new house for a little while so she may receive complete rest. This respite was prescribed to her by her husband, a physician.
Mary, who is the main character, shows the viewer a convincing portrayal of a paranoid and mistrusting mental patient. She has emotional displays that are inappropriate, silly, sad, or full of rage.. She often showed socially disruptive and sometimes dangerous behavior. A large part of her behavior included uncontrollable paranoia of her son's safety and periods of regression such as jumping around in the back of a truck. Mary had made some shady references to outside forces that she was acting as if had wired the house and were spying on her. Also Mary worries constantly about her son's safety in a very obsessive manner.