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. This occurs when she rebels and rips down the wallpaper that has driven her insane. “The Yellow Wallpaper” is told by a woman whose husband, a physician, confines her to the upstairs bedroom of a house the family has rented for the summer. Forbidden from working and thinking, the woman begins to crave stimulation. Her husband, John, confines her to the nursery, because he treats her as a child, “It is a big, airy room, the whole floor nearly, with windows that look all ways, and air and sunshine galore.
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. Once she peels off the wallpaper to free the women her husband returns and faints at the sight of her circling the room which she continues to do despite having to crawl over his slumped body. Context can be described as "The part of a text or statement that surrounds a Page 2 particular word or passage and determines its meaning." Which in this case is extremely important for
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 color of the wallpaper reflects her sickness. While the narrator becomes ill, the wallpaper with flamboyant patterns has a “repulsive, atrocious” yellow color that represents disease. A woman’s anxiety was seen an illness back then and to cure it, she was to be taken away to rest, just rest. The narrator in the story developed depression and nervousness from delivering her baby, and similarly the patterns and the color of the wallpaper signify the illness of angst and fear. Since the
From the passage the narrator shows that she has completely been consumed by her infatuation of the wallpaper, so much as to say “I wonder if they came out of that wall-paper as I did?” when the narrator is speaking in this line she sees, “so many of those creeping women,” or figures that she believed were birth from the wallpaper as she believes she was also. She no longer was of this world, but her fear of the wallpaper grew into an obsession which she now feels has made her a part of the wallpaper. She proves the wallpaper to now be her home with her statement, “I shall have
Examine how Charlotte Perkins Gilman challenges attitudes towards the role of women in society through her use of form, structure and language in the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman challenges attitudes towards the role of women in society through her use of form, structure and language in numerous ways. The story is a fictionalized autobiographical account that illustrates the emotional and intellectual deterioration of the female narrator who is a wife as well as a mother. The woman, who seemingly is suffering from post-partum depression, searches for some sort of peace in her male dominated world. She is given a “cure” from her husband (a doctor) that requires strict bed rest and an enforced lack of any form of metal stimulation. As a result of her husbands control, the woman develops and obsessive attachment to the wallpaper which masks the walls of her bedroom.
Ally welcomes her warmly, but secretly, she hates her. In the evening, Georgia comes to visit Ally at home, saying that Billy had confessed that there was something between her and Ally. Ally tells her everything and they confess their hate for each other! They then feel better. The next day, Ally and Billy assign trial for Billings, which calls for an obsessive disorder that requires him to touch women’s behind.
Zeena is a victim of illness, helplessness, and a loveless marriage. While one may consider Zeena an irritating woman, who spends her day complaining, it is not an exaggeration that she is truly ill. Although it is suggested throughout the novel that her illness is all in her head, there are many signs that indicate that she is actually sick. For example, she constantly speaks of her shooting pains. In the novel, Zeena tells Ethan about her pain; "[Zeena] got [her] shooting pains so bad that [she went] over to Bettsbridge to spend the night…”(78).
‘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.
The Yellow Wallpaper is story from the mind and emotions of a woman suffering from a mental illness. The narrator (Jane) begins to think that another woman is sneaking around the room behind the wallpaper, trying to get out, so she locks herself in the room and begins to tear down pieces of the wallpaper to free the woman she thought was trapped. John unlocks the door with the key and finds Jane almost possessed by the woman behind the wallpaper. Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s feminist background gives a feminist standpoint in The Yellow Wallpaper because the narrator’s husband, John acts superior to the narrator. One can pick out the connections between the author and the narrator in the story fairly easy if there is knowledge of Gilman’s life.