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.
Although ten to fifteen percent of women can suffer from postpartum depression the eighteen nineties was an age in which men would normally see women as hysterical and nervous; therefore when a woman claimed to be very ill after having a child, men would simply tell them to sleep it off and dismiss them for “there is really nothing the matter” (p.205). Throughout the story the reader learns about the wife’s drive to insanity and how the wallpaper constantly symbolizes her insanity, many aspects of her life and many other women’s lives in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. At the beginning of the story the reader is introduced to the new house as “the most beautiful place” however, “there is something strange about the house- [the wife] can feel it.” (p.205). But, what could make such a beautiful place seem frightening? The wife wanted to stay in a room downstairs that had wonderful roses all over, “but John would not hear of it … so [they] took the nursery at the top of the house.” (p.206).
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.
Catherine, tries to get the two most important men in life, Edgar and Heathcliff, to become friends but when that does not work out, she locks herself in her room for two days. She develops psychological insanity. In Foster’s book, a disease “should have some strong symbolic or metaphorical possibilities” (Foster 217). Catherine, she has a nervous breakdown from her the time she starves herself to the time she dies. Psychological insanity also means “insane” hence insanity and Catherine does not eat and all she ever talks about is death.
Leading to the theme of violence and/or abuse that is present throughout the novel. Violence can be shown through society where Kabul is corrupted by the Taliban and its autocratic leaders as well as through many characters within A Thousand Splendid Suns. By the age of nineteen, Mariam has suffered the loss of her mother Nana, and has been forced to marry a man from Kabul because her father does not want her. Rasheed is Mariams husband and when she was at her new home in Kabul, the house began to shake, “crackling sounds and intense sudden roars” were all she could hear(Hosseini, 100). Once she got to a window, she looked out so see the military planes flying over Kabul in great numbers.
In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator and her husband move to a colonial mansion for three months in order to help the narrator get better. She moves upstairs in this horrid room with yellow wallpaper. Throughout the story she studies the wallpaper because she isn’t allowed out of the room that much because her husband, John, a physician, says that it is best that she stays inside. As she learns more about the wallpaper she realizes that she sees a woman inside it and she spends a lot of time plotting how to free the woman. She locks her room and tears off most of the wallpaper and frees the woman.
Response to The Yellow Wallpaper Imagine yourself being locked in a room alone, scared, and mistreated. Imagine that room not being a part of your own home. Imagine having all of your friends and family members plotting against you. These are the emotions the narrator felt in Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s literary masterpiece, The Yellow Wallpaper. The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story about a woman who is suffering from what is modernly known as post partrum depression.
“He asked me all sorts of questions, too, and pretended to be very loving and kind. As if I couldn’t see through him! Still I don’t wonder he acts so, sleeping under this paper for three months (Pg 551).” The narrator shows how obsessed she has truly become with the wallpaper. She even tries to move the bed that is nailed to the floor. She goes as far as getting angry with the bed and tries biting the corner to make it budge.
Cupcake Brown’s memoirs entitled ‘A Piece of Cake’ identify how sociological constructs and adult constructed frameworks impacted on her journey through childhood and into adulthood as she resigned herself to loss, hurt, disgrace, shame, depression and defeat. Cupcake’s (Cup) story supports Locke’s (1632-1704) socialisation theory that a child is an ‘empty vessel’ and will learn from experience; her childhood was influenced by bad experiences which culminated in yet another blackout, finding herself lying raped behind a dumpster with no recollection of the previous night. Cup realised she had agency as she began to make sense of her culture. Her bravest act was to finally ask for help. Cup’s childhood, which at the age of eleven one feels should have been full of love, innocence and free from harm, was lost following the sudden death of her mother.
Such isolated atmosphere and forced solitary confinement eventually envelops the narrator in her insanity. While receiving conflicting information from the narrator herself, the reader becomes aware of the narrator's decline in mental health. In Charlotte Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator’s skewed perceptions of her surroundings and mental state, along with her inconsistent narration, reflects her incomprehension of the reality of her declining mental health leaving the audience left in a similar state of confusion. The narrator and her physician husband, John, rent a mansion for the summer so she may recuperate from what is described as a nervous condition. Although the narrator does not believe that she is actually ill, John is convinced that she is suffering from a “temporary nervous depression” (Gillman 12), and prescribes rest and isolation as her treatment.