She reflects her feelings of imprisonment by her husband, onto how she interprets the wallpaper. While she continues to find meaning in it, she becomes more and more insane. Eventually, Jane starts to feel as if the wallpaper is watching her. While she starts to decode it, she discovers a woman trapped in the bars of the pattern. The woman stuck in the wallpaper does circles and is sometimes able to crawl out through the window.
‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ is a short story written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman in 1899. Gilman wrote the story after a recent recovery from madness in retaliation to a doctor’s wishes that she rest. The story reveals the case of a young woman who appears to be battling with mental illness whilst simultaneously being oppressed by her husband. However, the story also delves deeply into society’s ideas about women within marriage during the Victorian era. The story could be recognised as one woman’s descent into madness.
He also puts her under the intense scrutiny. While under this confinement, she begins to go mad. She believes the wallpaper is monitoring her, and she eventually sees herself as a prisoner inside it. Her fear towards her oppressive husband is clearly demonstrated when she says, “There comes John, and I must put this away- he hates to have me write a word” (Gillman
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.
As a result of her husbands control, the woman develops and obsessive attachment to the wallpaper which masks the walls of her bedroom. Gilman composed the short story to make determined statements about feminism and individuality to oppose the male authority that ruled over her during her lifetime. Gilman does this by describing the narrators decent into madness, which is caused by many factors, all being linked to her husband. It’s immediately apparent in “The Yellow Wallpaper” that the woman allows herself to be inferior to men, in particular her husband, John. This ultimately leaves the reader with many questions about 19th century male-female relationships and perhaps insanity.
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.
In The Yellow Wallpaper, a short story by Charlotte Gilman, the symbol of the yellow wallpaper itself portrays a role into the main characters spiral into madness. To the main character, Jane, the wallpaper is at first a nuisance, then an obsession, and finally salvation. Jane becomes overwhelmed from the confided space with the wallpaper and begins to spiral into a deeper depression than what she started with and eventually loses her mind. The material of the paper itself represents Jane's everyday life, the illogical pattern that comes about in it, reflects the absence of logic in her mind and the very colour of the paper depicts the illness that yellows her sight and imprisons her within an unpredictable life, these things all playing a role in Jane's insanity. The wallpaper is at first a great annoyance to Jane as she claims that it is confusing and contradicting.
The unnamed narrator of the story is advised to abstain from any and all physical activity and intellectual stimulation. May it be reading, writing, or even to seeing her new baby. To ensure the narrator receives the full effect of this form of treatment, the woman’s husband takes her to a country house where she is kept in a former nursery decorated with yellow wallpaper. Over time she becomes obsessed with the wallpaper in every aspect whether it be the look or even smell of it. She eventually becomes so absorbed by the wallpaper that she sees a woman trapped inside of it and then tries to free her by peeling off the wallpaper.
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.
She is unreliable because she is deranged. She “creeps smoothly on the floor,” this is one of the few points that explains how deranged Jane is. The story is set in a time when women are more submissive. John, the narrator’s husband, is a doctor who claims that Jane is ill. Jane was told to stay in her room which is unique as the “windows are barred.” The barring on the window symbolizes herself being holed up inside and in the real world against her will. The bed is also nailed down in her room.