The narrator describes the wallpaper as such, “The color is hideous enough, and unreliable enough, and infuriating enough, but the pattern is torturing” (351). The yellow wallpaper itself signifies women being suppressed by the men in their lives and the inability to break their dominance. She also eventually sees a figure behind the wallpaper in the form of a creeping woman. The woman actually portrays the narrator herself. After staring at the wallpaper long enough, she finds that the pattern moves because of the woman behind it trying to get out.
Gilman uses symbols to explain the how women are trapped in domestic life. The symbol that Gilman uses the yellow wallpaper in the room she is confined in. At first, the wallpaper is just awful as she says “The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smoldering unclean yellow.” She is disgusted by it and understands why children, who have been in this room, would want to tear it down. Then, the wallpaper becomes a point of curiosity as she wants to discover the organization of the pattern. She said, “...and I determine for the thousandth time that I will follow that pointless pattern to some sort of a conclusion,” as if the wallpaper was made with symmetry in mind.
By tearing it down, the narrator emerges from the wallpaper and asserts her own identity, albeit a somewhat confused, insane one. Though she must crawl around the room, as the woman in the wallpaper crawls around, this "creeping" is the first stage in a feminist uprising. From the beginning of the story, the narrator’s creativity is set in conflict with John’s rationality. As a writer, the narrator thrives in her use of her imagination, and her creativity is an inherent part of her nature. John does not recognize his wife’s fundamental creativity and believes that he can force out her imaginative fancies and replace them with his own solid
Selen Yılmaz 20801395 Third Essay Outline OUTLINE The Climax of Madness Essay Topic: Compare and contrast the treatment of the theme of madness in “The Fall of the House of Usher’’ and “The Yellow Wallpaper’’. Thesis Statement: Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher’’ and “Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper’’ are stories which totally include madness, fear and dread that are products of human psychology. While Poe’s story is completely immersed in madness, Gilman’s story limits the element of madness to the imagination of the narrator. In Poe’s story, madness exists in the Usher’s house and its environment, however, in Gilman’s story, madness completely in the mind of the narrator. It shows that both stories handle the subject of growing madness, however, in Poe’s story, the madness surrounds all characters, whereas in Gilman’s story the narrator is the one who is the victim of the madness.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” is driven by the narrator’s sense that the wallpaper is a text she must interpret, that it symbolizes something that affects her directly. Accordingly, the wallpaper develops its symbolism throughout the story. At first it seems merely unpleasant: it is ripped, soiled, and an “unclean yellow.” The worst part is the ostensibly formless pattern, which fascinates the narrator as she attempts to figure out how it is organized. After staring at the paper for hours, she sees a ghostly sub-pattern behind the main pattern, visible only in certain light. Eventually, the sub-pattern comes into focus as a desperate woman, constantly crawling and stooping, looking for an escape from behind the main pattern, which has come to resemble the bars of a cage.
We, as the reader, see this as unfair but they see it as normal as during the Victorian times, a husband could put their wife in a madhouse without question. Maud is presented at first as clueless as to what is going on around her but our opinion changes as we get further into the novel. “’and your last mistress’ she went on then, ‘she was quite a fine lady’” here, Maud is deceiving Sue, making her believe that she is ignorant to her plan. The way Waters’ makes the character of Maud act blind to what is going on around her is how she deceives the reader, by making them believe one thing and then revealing the other. Maud makes Sue believe that she is a lovely, kind person to aid her deception.
Her current self, that is removed from her previous, more sane state, is becoming confortable in the room and feels she can do what she wants in it, however her recollection which still hangs with her drives her to feel the need to rip down the yellow wallpaper. This wallpaper which she feels symbolizes her prison when she was first shut off in the room, hypothetically imprisoning her former self. I really have discovered something at last.Through watching so much at night, when it changes so, Ihave finally found out.The front pattern DOES move--and no wonder! The
The wallpaper is used characterically to reflect the marriage the narrator finds herself ambushed inside. At the start of the short story, the wallpaper is merely seen as an aberrant bore, but as the narrative progresses, the wallpaper becomes much more baleful and frightening. As a site of symbolism, the symbol has three functions in Charlotte Perkins Gilman s ’, “The Yellow Wallpaper”: it reveals the wallpaper including the imagery, imprisonment and symbolism. The imagery of the wallpaper in Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” transitions as the short story is developed in order to emulate the increasing realization of the monopoly the narrator’s marriage has upon herself. 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).
When it comes to the latter part of the story, the narrator finds out there are women in the wallpaper crawling around. “Sometimes I think there are a great many women behind, and sometimes only one, and she crawls around fast and her crawling shakes it!” (1287) As time goes by, she begins to identify herself with one of the women in the wallpaper, who are locked in it and regard her husband and Jennie as the obstructers who forbid her escaping out of the wallpaper. Finally she tears the wallpaper and crawls away, while John fainted incapably from her insanity. Her resistance appears to be gained in the long
'The Tell Tale Heart' is a story about a man who killed an old man just because he didn't like the way his eyes looked like. The main character speaks about madness as being a gift and not a kid of disability for example in lines 2 - 4 he says: ' but why would you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses-not destroyed-not dulled them'. This person is trying to persuade us that the disease isn't bad. The mad man killed the old man and then cut him up and put him under the floorboards of the house.