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.
Wallpaper Symbolizing Jane’s Insanity In the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman, the wallpaper causes and symbolizes Jane’s imprisonment which eventually causes her decent into insanity. Gilman shows this through the patterns and colors in the wallpaper itself, through the woman that she believes is stuck in the wallpaper, and when then wallpaper is finally taken down. As Jane continues to study the wallpaper, the different aspects that she discovers contribute to her eventual madness. The physical appearance of the wallpaper is directly symbolic of Jane’s situation. The yellowish color is affiliated with the weakness, and the powerlessness that she is feeling.
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.
‘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.
Tracey Holloway English Literature 2328 Professor Solak October 5, 2013 Who is That Woman inside the Wallpaper? Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” takes place in the late 1890’s. Her protagonist appears to be suffering from postpartum depression and slowly losing her mind while in the home she has been sent to for treatment. Yet upon further investigation into the character of our nameless narrator, the reader learns that the story is essentially focused on her struggle to maintain her own identity and sanity within the limitations of her setting. The central character’s analysis of a fictional woman trapped behind the bars of the horrid yellow wallpaper that encased the room she was confined to, severed her identity as she suppressed the anxieties of her experiences and ultimately led to the demise of the boundaries between herself and the imagined woman.
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.
Elderly patients mistreated in care homes After investigating some of the mistreatment of elderly people in care homes from news articles on the internet mostly from the BBC there is significant evidence to suggest a lack of certain life quality factors in the care homes written about. The most startling being an elderly woman with Alzheimers and arthritis being physically abused and bullied. The article reported footage (caught on hidden cameras that her daughter had positioned) of the elderly lady (Maria Worroll) being slapped, manually rolled over and hauled into a bed when a hoist should have been used by her carers. The fact that more than one had assaulted her in this way implies that the care workers were conforming to inappropriate norms at the work place, resulting in Ms Worroll suffering considerably. This abuse probably left Ms Worrol stripped of her dignity, privacy, social support, any form of choice or autonomy and undoubtedly made the woman in question very scared and confused.
The wallpaper like John is a confine in which neither woman can escape from. The many heads in the wallpaper are the activities that the narrator wants to do such as writing, seeing her Cousin Henry and Julia, and sleeping downstairs. “I don’t like to look out the window even- there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast”(434). The women creeping outside are women like the narrator who are oppressed and have to do things in secret just like the narrator secretly tried to
The narrator begins to have thoughts of homicide because of the wallpaper and its smell. She states “It used to disturb me at first. I thought seriously of burning the house to reach the smell” (753). At the end of it all the narrator finally goes insane. She states, “Then I peeled off all the paper I could reach standing on the floor.
The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman Paved the Way for Later Generations Charlotte Perkins Gilman's, "The Yellow Wallpaper" is a partial autobiography. Appropriately, this short story is about a mentally disturbed woman and her husband's attempts to help her get well. He does so by convincing her that solitude and constant bed rest is the best way to cure her problem. Atrocious yellow wallpaper covers this room and it aids in her insanity. The woman is writing the story to express her insane thoughts against her husband's will.