The “Yellow Wallpaper’’, a story of a woman’s progressive neurosis that leads to hysteria and insanity, written in gothic style, explores the importance of self-expression, work and creativity in maintaining a healthy and balanced psychological outlook. When this is oppressed by gender and medical subordination, the consequences can be tragic. The yellow wallpaper embodies two aspects within the story. Psychological and Sociological. Both being a reason towards the woman’s slow neurotic ride to insanity.
Gilman shows this when the woman of the story says “I meant to be such a help to John, such a real rest and comfort, and here I am a comparative burden already”. She also shows that woman at this time didn’t really do anything for themselves, “Nobody would believe what an effort it is to do what little I am able - to dress and entertain, and order things”. The woman in the story is believing in the social norm and what her husband belittles her to be. She feels that she is a burden to her husband because she dislikes the wallpaper and continues to complain about how much it bothers her. He refuses to change it making her blame herself for not being able to cope with the “dull” and “flamboyant” yellow wallpaper.
During her time at this home, she has a psychological breakdown, which is shown through an imaginative conversation with the wallpaper. The relationship between the female narrator and the wallpaper reveals the sickening condition of the narrator and also symbolically shows how women are oppressed in the society. The story
Unfortunately the only way he knows how to help her it by treating her as a medical patient or as an object and not as a person who needed love, not just care. By doing this he aids to her mental decent, the last thing he meant to do. The evidence as to how much he truly loved his wife is shown at the end when he finally breaks in on his wife, and is so shocked and overcome by sadness that he faints. Unfortunately this point in the story also illustrates how far gone the narrator is, moving past her husband without recognizing him. In fact she even complains about “that man” and having to “creep over him” as she makes her
The Yellow Wallpaper By the end of the “The Yellow Wallpaper,” the narrator lets her surroundings, the wallpaper, and her husband John, get the best of her. John treats the narrator as if she were a child and takes away her right to choose and decide how she feels; this eventually leads to her defeat. After being treated like a child and put in a room that is barred up, she develops problems which eventually lead to paranoia and insanity. Both paranoia and insanity eventually lead her to believe that she is the woman who has escaped from the yellow wallpaper. From the very beginning of the story, problems are brought up that hint toward the defeat of Jane.
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.
As her insanity gradually deepens, she is preoccupied with one woman behind the wallpaper and identifies completely with this woman, believing that she is also trapped within the bar-like pattern of the wallpaper. She feels an mysterious connection to the woman and shakes the pattern as she tries to break
This meant, cleaning, cooking, caring for the children and husband, etc. Similar to these expectations, the narrator in The Yellow Wallpaper is forbidden from reading and writing. Her husband/ doctor, John, does not allow it because he thinks that putting her on the “rest cure” will help her come out of her depression or mental illness. Little does he know that not allowing her to write or read, forcing her to sneak and do it, is causing her to become more and more insane and obsessed with the yellow wallpaper. This is a prime example of a man repressing a woman’s rights.
Ken Figgins Eng 112-041M M/W 6:30-10:10 The Evils of the “Resting Cure” Through the story, The Yellow Wallpaper, we see how women are subordinate to men to a childlike state. We see it cleary in the way John, her husband and physician treats her as a child by not allowing her to make any choices on her own. His treatment is the cause of her worsening condition. He is constantly questioning her and saying to only listen to him because he knows what he is talking about, he is a doctor, and knows exactly what she needs to get better, even though he is never taking into account what she says, If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman has three themes: becoming free, madness, and the dangers of the “rest cure.” The story is written as the secret diary of a woman who is diagnosed with temporary nervous depression by her husband and doctor and is prescribed the “rest cure.” Though the narrator wants to write, she is prohibited from any activity due to her treatment. Thus, allowing her to create a figure in the yellow wallpaper while in the confinement of her room. Gilman writes in "The Yellow Wallpaper" of the narrator who is apparently trying to free herself from her sickness and the room, and she is trying to free the woman in the wallpaper. Throughout the story, the narrator, also known as the protagonist of the story, is trying to free herself from her illness. Readers can see this when Gilman writes, "I think sometimes that if I were only well enough to write a little it would relieve the press