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.
This character goes by the name of Chief Bromden; a six foot seven American-Indian who everyone else in the ward believes is deaf and dumb. Kesey’s use of the Chief as the narrator in the novel has both advantages and disadvantages. The disadvantage is mostly due to the Chief having hallucinations and every so often. Despite the fact that Bromden’s madness and hallucinations interfere with our interpretation of what is actually happening, it also symbolically reinforces the themes in the novel. Women as castrators, society’s destruction of natural impulses, and false diagnoses of insanity are some of the themes which are reinforced by the Chief’s madness and hallucinations in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
She states in the first paragraph “… I haven’t noticed any women like me on television…” yet her next paragraph is centered on a television show about a woman with MS. Mairs tries to redeem herself by describing how this woman’s emotional weakness, for running back to her doctor/love interest, is inaccurate, but that is mostly a sexist representation of women and less a misrepresentation of the disabled. Mairs continues the rest of the essay in her mostly hostile fashion. She tosses in many rhetorical devices to the reader which, admittedly, makes her feel somewhat relatable and real. Her informal style of writing makes it seem like she knows her reader on an intimate level, therefor you are more inclined to accept her statements without evidence, succumbing to her requests for disability to be viewed as normal. She wraps up her essay
There was one particular quote in the novel that seemed out of place in my opinion. The quote depicts women in a very negative way. The beginning of the quote is as followed: “Experience will teach you the real characters of the beings who chiefly compose your species” (86). The statement was made by a male character from the novel. Then the quote continues and states: “You will find them, [women] a set of harpies, absurd, treacherous, and deceitful—regardless of strong obligations, and mindful of slight injuries…” (86).
The Yellow Wallpaper The final lines for “The Yellow Wallpaper” make me believe that the narrator has finally slipped into insanity. I think Jane is actually the narrator, and when she slips into insanity she feels that she has finally escaped from the torments of her own mind. The longer the narrator stays in the bedroom with the yellow wallpaper, the more she feels she is in prison, and the woman she sees imprisoned behind the wallpaper symbolizes her and how she feels. The narrator becomes desperate to free the woman behind the wallpaper before their rental is up, because she thinks that freeing the woman in the wallpaper will be freeing herself from her prison. At the end, the narrator briefly considers committing suicide with the rope
She shows how women can only be categorised as either an angel or a whore. It shows the way that women can only be judged at the time. She also frequently alludes to the “bad” women in literature to show how women could only be categorised in those binary opposites like Lady Macbeth or Eve. She uses rhetorical devices to explain how bad women are needed to disrupt the static order which is Patriarchy. Atwood also shows her opposition to the extreme feminism that existed in her time where feminism was influencing the creation of literature at the time.
In ‘The Devils Wife’ Carol Ann Duffy’s presentation of Myra Hinley can be interpreted in many ways. The language Duffy uses is effective in showing the corruption of Hinley by Ian Brady, this effect is created using the short sentences and language which is blunt and doesn’t flow well. This effect makes it seem as though everything seems to be happening very fast for Hindley as if she's got no control over her own actions almost; 'I know it was me who was there.' this make it seem as though she is acting without thinking as though she has no personal control and it shows the corruption that has come from being obsessed with ‘the devil.’ The language used is very blunt, this helps the reader see how Hindley is drained of humanity because of Brady, ‘He held my heart in his fist and squeezed it dry’. Sentences ans sections of poems are repeated which gives the impression of Hinley slowly losing her mind throughout the poem.
Mary and the women of “The Yellow Wallpaper” are both victims of controlling men and the undermined of women at the time these stories take place. In which in both cases plays a major role in driving these women into insanity. These women both find an escape from reality to some sort of comfort. They both find a way of using these imprisoned situations to create a place of happiness. To others, these actions are looked upon as insanity but in both situations, there are only two ways of escaping their realism; insanity or death.
Discuss madness in relation to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. The ‘revolting’(pg 3) paper is the eponymous metaphor of the novella. The wallpaper has layers, hidden depths and intricacies which can only be seen by close examination and only understood by the narrator by her when her obsessive interrogation of it reaches its disturbing climax. This wallpaper is an allegory which represents the complications of a woman’s position in conventional marriage behind the façade, or outer ‘pattern’(pg 3) of the sanction. 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.
Miss Bingley Miss Bingley is a foolish and scheming character. She is shown in such a light that she is the complete opposite to that of Elizabeth Bennett; she is desperate for Darcy’s attention. "'Eliza Bennett,' said Miss Bingley, when the door was closed on her, 'is one of those young ladies who seek to recommend themselves to the other sex, by undervaluing their own...but, in my opinion, it is a paltry device, a very mean art.'" Miss Bingley immediately shows the reader her distaste to Elizabeth by trying to show Darcy what she believes is Elizabeth’s scheming character when in fact it is her that is the one trying to fool Darcy and the reader into thinking lowly of Elizabeth. Miss Bingley uses lots of pauses in her sentence possibly to show the reader that she may be pausing to see the effect her words may have on who she is speaking to.