John is a physician and believes that his wife is only suffering from a “temporary nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency” (70) and due to this condition she should obtain plenty of rest, air and exercise but absolutely no work. The narrator is a writer that is forbidden to write because her husband believes that any form of society or stimulus could cause her condition to deteriorate further. As the story continue you beginning to understand the relationship between the narrator and her husband John. John seems to be very controlling and throughout the story berates his wife, while treating her like a small child that needs caring for. Every attempt that is made by the narrator to express her concerns is met with opposition or disregard.
Zoë Wickham May 5th 2008 6th Period The Woman in “The Yellow Wallpaper” Charlotte Perkins Gilman was a feminist writer and in her short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” she creates a women going crazy because of her husband’s firm hold on her. The woman trapped in the wallpaper is a symbol of how women are trapped by men. Written in first person, this short story contains a series of entries the woman writes in secret. The husband controls every move his wife takes, every hour planned with the pills she needs. 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 suggests how women sometimes experience men to be senile and insensitive towards their emotions, when they need them to be protective and watchful yet they can be cowards. Nevertheless, Duffy captures the quiet resignation of the spirited and resourceful wife, who is prepared to greet her husband’s dramatic life change with optimism and compassion as she ‘tried to be kind’ which highlights when women experience various obstacles in a marriage where they still end up devoted to the ones
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.
His own accounts with women dealt with sensitivity to the way his mother and sister were treated by his father. “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” has extreme undertones of emotional, sexual, and spiritual need that are apparent in his character “Maggie the Cat”. During the 1950s women were conditioned to find their worth in marriage and creating a sound family structure. The women in Williams’ play are portrayed as very dependent creatures with a variety of characteristics, each in their own very different but all three tied by the constraints of society. Women were to marry, and no matter how miserable they were treated, they were to please their husbands.
Whereas in Locksley Hall Amy is presented as a woman who is being constantly controlled by men at first her father and then her husband who she doesn’t love. Firstly in Mariana Tennyson uses a repetitive rhyme scheme to reflect Mariana’s feeling of loneliness. For example in the first stanza the rhyme scheme is “plots” “all” “knots” and “wall.” These are all very simple rhymes which emphasise Mariana’s monotonous and structured life. It is also extremely ironic that Tennyson uses this structured rhyme scheme to present a woman who has a very low state of consciousness and who is extremely mentally unstable. Additionally the rhyme scheme is also at times rather rigid which still emphasises the monotony of her life.
Jagroop Singh Carolina Ruiz English 1302 25 February 2013 Response Paper 3 “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman written long back in 1892 is story of woman struggling from mental dispersion and her husband john is her doctor for the treatment. In my opinion john treat his wife like a small girl and take care of her very sincerely. Woman also thinks john care about her as in her lines “he is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction”. (Gilman 545). But in my opinion I think her husband is the main cause of her illness as he doesn’t let her think anything and just sit alone in room with a yellow wallpaper on the wall.
Puzzle pieces begin to fit together, or so it seems, when the narrator states “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression- a slight hysterical tendency…” (425). For a moment our minds are eased, grateful that there is not something more serious wrong with the main character of our story. However, it becomes increasingly apparent throughout the story that the narrator is more mentally unstable than her husband and perhaps even herself, believe. Being mentally unstable causes the narrator to be unreliable and have an inaccurate point of view. Due to the fact that the narrator’s point of view is first person, some of her remarks draw more attention than others.
In the short story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator and her husband move to a colonial mansion for three months in order to help the narrator get better. She moves upstairs in this horrid room with yellow wallpaper. Throughout the story she studies the wallpaper because she isn’t allowed out of the room that much because her husband, John, a physician, says that it is best that she stays inside. As she learns more about the wallpaper she realizes that she sees a woman inside it and she spends a lot of time plotting how to free the woman. She locks her room and tears off most of the wallpaper and frees the woman.
Further, she does little to hide these flirtations from her husband, though they’re likely to infuriate him and make him feel even smaller. As the only woman on the ranch, Curley’s wife is lonely and sad; something her marriage to Curley only makes worse. She reveals throughout the course of the story that she is unhappy in her marriage because her husband seems to care little for her, and is really more interested in talking about himself than anything else. She is constantly searching for her husband, “I’m looking for Curley.” Although, this may be just an excuse to mingle with the men and have some company. Curley’s wife barges in on Lennie, Crooks, and Candy in Chapter Four.