Kamara Bellis Buckner English 1301 25 JUN 09 The Victorian Woman’s Insane Treatment in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” During the Victorian era, woman were to be dependant and obedient of their husbands. They were not allowed to pursue careers or interests. Gilman, being a woman of this time experienced this oppression first hand. She had been diagnosed with a nervous condition and was ordered to bed rest after the birth of her child. This ill-fated treatment prescribed by her physician Weir Mitchell, whom she referenced in her story, drove her to the brink of insanity.
The wife is forbidden to write or leave the house, and is confined to her bedroom most of the day. Unable to do what she loves, which is writing, she turns her focus on interpreting the ugly, yellow wallpaper in her room. She describes a “formless figure that seems to skulk about the behind the front design” of the wallpaper. She soon goes mad. The reader’s reaction of fear is the effect of our point of view.
The Significance of Voice in Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator’s dynamic voice exemplifies the her struggle with insanity as she becomes infatuated with the wallpaper in the attic room where she holds herself prisoner. With instruction of her physician and approval from her husband, the narrator is to only rest while staying in the summerhouse recovering from “temporary nervous depression” (Gilman 2). As the story plays out, the narrator begins to lose touch with reality and we witness her collapse from beginning to end through her own storytelling. From the start, the narrator confesses to not liking the attic room where she is staying at all and immediately explains that the “windows are barred”, “there are rings and things in the walls”, and that the wallpaper is “stripped off in great patches all around the head of my bead” (Gilman 4). At this point, the narrator appears normal and healthy, as anyone would be aware and curious of his or her surroundings in a new environment.
The central character’s analysis of a fictional woman trapped behind the bars of the horrid yellow wallpaper that encased the room she was confined to, severed her identity as she suppressed the anxieties of her experiences and ultimately led to the demise of the boundaries between herself and the imagined woman. In the beginning, the woman in the paper was merely the protagonist’s own shadow. The yellow wallpaper was a constant source of angst for her and she spent much time studying it. At first, the many different patterns in the paper are simply never-ending without any conclusions. However, as her mental illness advances and the constant isolation from everyone continues, she starts obsessing over the wallpaper and an actual form begins to take shape among the patterns.
Thomas’ and Gilbert’s families both have similar aspects about their families, but also have many different ones. ‘The Black Balloon’ seemed more realistic than ‘What’s Eating Gilbert Grape’ because it portrayed a convincing family and their lifestyle. In the two movies Thomas’ and Gilbert’s families have an “unrealistic” expectation that the boys will take care of disabled brother. In Thomas’ case, before his mother goes to hospital Thomas mashes his faeces into his bedroom carpet. Afterwards Thomas and his mother have an argument, “I don’t want anything to do with him…he’s a freak!” However when his mother is in hospital with the baby, his father can’t care or doesn’t know how to care for Charlie.
But in my opinion I think her husband is the main cause of her illness as he doesn’t let her think anything and just sit alone in room with a yellow wallpaper on the wall. She can’t talk to anyone and she find herself trapped in a room where she
Zoë Wickham May 5th 2008 6th Period The Woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a feminist writer and in her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” she creates a women going crazy because of her husband’s firm hold on her. The woman trapped in the wallpaper is a symbol of how women are trapped by men. Written in first person, this short story contains a series of entries the woman writes in secret. The husband controls every move his wife takes, every hour planned with the pills she needs. Once the woman character in this short story develops her own sense of control apart from her husband she can plan her flight to freedom.
Growing up, Alice and her sister functioned as the caretaking unit for their mother since their father was emotionally unavailable. Alice’s job was to smooth over any disruptions and assure her family everything would be okay during her mother’s panic attacks. Everyone in Alice’s house was quite and reserved, leaving Alice feeling lonely since she describes herself as loud and weird. Keeping up appearances was very important to the Sebold family and Alice was told as a young girl not to share family secrets, such as her mother’s struggle with alcoholism. Alice was raped and beaten by an African American man on May 8th 1891 at Syracuse University.
Because of their "betrayal," she was sent to live in her relative's home where she was powerless, had few possessions since the family was very poor, and had limited freedom. Here she was unhappily a foreign member of a family group, and had no individual freedom to do what she pleased. "She could stay up all night if she wished, she could skip breakfast if she wished, she could fall into bed after her morning classes and sleep a heavy drugged sleep for much of the afternoon; and no one knew or cared" (Oates 142). This demonstrates that she became dependent on her new life style and valued it to the fullest. In college she is able to live as a separate entity, able to control more parts of her life, but she still holds onto the belief, from her childhood experiences, that dependency will kill her individuality.
DewayneQuochytewa Sept. 10,2014 Eng. 102 J.Witt The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Why was John’s wife not allowed to write and leave the room? John was a physician who took care of his wife that was diagnosed as having temporary nervous depression.But if she was john’s wife why was she locked in a room that was described as a small room with yellow wall paper that had a bad smell to it and with bars on the window. I had to read this twice, was a confusing story. Maybe she was mentally ill and could not take care of herself.