The short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Perkins Gilman is a look into the mental decline, and enlightenment of an anonymous lady. The narrator of this story is an odd character, both losing touch with reality and at the same time gaining greater self-understanding. This paradox is important to understanding the suffering of our narrator. All throughout the story she faces objects, or people, or situations that seam normal at first but that turn out extremely strange. This shows us that the main problem the narrator is faced with is how oppressive her situation is on her personality.
Body paragraph worksheet The gender roles in both the pieces increase marital problems for the married couples. In The Yellow Wallpaper, Jane tells her husband that she is sick and she wants to leave, but he doesn’t believe that she is sick. Even though John, her husband, is a physician, he doesn’t understand her feelings and how she feels. She doesn’t want to tell anybody about her husband not believing her, so she feels relief after writing, “You see he does not believe I am sick! And what can one do?”(Gilman 1).Gilman is using gender roles when she says that the husband John doesn’t believe that the narrator is severely sick and she could not do anything to make him believe her.
Confinement is a method of placing boundaries and limitations on something or someone. The notion of confinement is presented in “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, through the main character Jane and her psychological journey as she faces confinement. The aspects of Jane's confinement create an excessive pressure upon her that ultimately leaves her no choice but to defy the norms of the nineteenth century in order to be free. The little knowledge presented to her keeps her unaware of her confinement, and it remains unfamiliar until through her own dread and apprehensiveness she begins to become aware of her own self. As the story transpires, Jane's unknown figure becomes all that is known to her; however, because of what is expected of her as a woman it is difficult for her to acknowledge her own self as she is afraid of her own monstrosity.
From the visual techniques used there are many ideas communicated to the audience as we can feel a sense of loneliness, depression, and desperation. Even though she is in a dark world that is hopeless, the small picture of the red leaf indicates that she is clutching onto a small glimmer of hope. The writing with this picture lacks punctuation and has negative connotations to show that she is starting to give up hope. Later on into the book there is a page where the girl is seen standing on a stage with the colours of light and dark juxtaposing with each other, which creates a meaning that, she is surrounded by darkness. The vector lines in this image points to her face, making her the focal point and the composition of the objects are foreign, cluttered together and form negative connotations.
Were they trapped within their homes as if they were prisons? By asking herself these questions we see how great the effect of her being treated like a child was to her. She had to ability to think or do for herself, all she was allowed to do was sit there, her body was well but her mind and soul were dying. In the story, The Yellow Wallpaper, evidence of the subordination of women to a childlike state is clear in the lack of power, control over her own mind and body, and he inability to make her on decisions and be heard. The lack of choice in her treatment is what made is lose mental stability and caused her go crazy.
This is the first time we begin to see what her character is really like as she opens up to the men. “Think I don’t like to talk to somebody ever’ once in a while?” is a definite example of the true desperation and anger she is feeling about her loneliness. Although she never admits to be lonely until the end, she still makes clear indications like these to demonstrate her somewhat obvious isolation she feels. In Crooks’ room she says, “talking to a bunch of bindle stiffs an’ likin’ it…ain’t nobody else” which shows almost what can be described as a defeat of her attempts to hide her loneliness. This is shown, firstly, by talking to “bindle stiffs”, she really has no one else to go to and so resulted to what comes across to be the lowest people on the ranch.
The room is becoming her obsession and her only true passion. Her husband is becoming less of a focus and she is not as uncomfortable with the inside of her prison as before, and longs less and less to leave. Her relationship with the outside world is becoming skewered, but her initial interpretation of the room as a prison with yellow walls remains the same. Her visualization of the women within the wallpaper, is her subconscious recollection of her initial state of mind before her mental deterioration. 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.
For some characters, conventional properties are something they care little for, but instead re driven solely by concern for others. Elinor Mompellion is a prime example of this along with Michael Mompellion and Anna Frith. But not all characters fall into this category, Colonel Bradford is one who lives by conventional properties and cares not for anyone but himself. Elinor Mompellion’s desire to help those in need is so overwhelming that the she cares little for conventional properties. Her concern for others is evident in the novel when she ventures to the empty Gowdie cottage in search for herbs and knowledge that may help extinguish the plague.
Such as women can not perform manual work as well as men, on the other hand, a man’s entire chemistry is different allowing him to be less emotional than a woman. Jane Addams and her colleague Ellen Gates Starr founded Hull House a place for down and out women. Jane treated these women as friends and ignoring their faults, became very close to these women. Being close to these women allowed Jane to understand their struggle but much of the information she gathered remained unpublished. She saw social differentiation as a block that society needed to get over, infuriately she herself was a victim.
Her mind becomes an abyss of nothingness as she emulates the object she once loathed. Charlotte Perkins’ the yellow wallpaper encounters numerous levels to which it can be read. The most simple being a woman slowly being driven mas. Also showing the social structure of a family and how the male is the dominant being and what he says is expected to be obeyed. The yellow wallpaper can also be read through the eyes of phycology and the making of a mental patient, how a woman locked up and restricted from using her mind is slowly suffocated by her madness.