‘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 yellowish color is affiliated with the weakness, and the powerlessness that she is feeling. The actual pattern of the wallpaper at first symbolizes the twists and winds of society and the difficulties of fitting in and following the rules. Eventually, once Jane studies the pattern and finds the order, she believes she understands it’s meaning. As the nights go on and she continues to study the paper, she finds that the pattern is like a prison, trapping everything inside it. She reflects her feelings of imprisonment by her husband, onto how she interprets the wallpaper.
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.
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.
“The Yellow Wallpaper” “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a story that explores the advancing depression and psychosis of a woman during a time in which women had few rights and were given little respect. The overall theme of this piece is to explore the gender roles of women during the nineteenth century. The Victorian era was one of extreme restrictions on the economic status as well as the individuality and sexuality of women. Perhaps the most important aspect of this story is the author’s use of symbolism to allow the reader to draw their own conclusions about the dynamic of the main character’s relationship with her husband, as well as her mental state. One aspect of the story that is striking relates to the fact that the entire piece is
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.
The Significance of Voice in Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, the narrator’s dynamic voice exemplifies the her struggle with insanity as she becomes infatuated with the wallpaper in the attic room where she holds herself prisoner. With instruction of her physician and approval from her husband, the narrator is to only rest while staying in the summerhouse recovering from “temporary nervous depression” (Gilman 2). As the story plays out, the narrator begins to lose touch with reality and we witness her collapse from beginning to end through her own storytelling. From the start, the narrator confesses to not liking the attic room where she is staying at all and immediately explains that the “windows are barred”, “there are rings and things in the walls”, and that the wallpaper is “stripped off in great patches all around the head of my bead” (Gilman 4). At this point, the narrator appears normal and healthy, as anyone would be aware and curious of his or her surroundings in a new environment.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” is a famous piece of feminist, realist literature that explores an oppressed woman’s mental collapse embodied by the hideous wallpaper that she is surrounded by. Both Poe and Gilman suffered from depression, and they channeled that into their writings in order to reveal the horrors of mental unrest. In Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” and Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” the setting is used to illustrate the damaged state of its protagonists. In “The Fall of the House of Usher,” Poe links the house and the character of Roderick Usher using complex symbolism. He first introduces the house through the perspective of the narrator: “but with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit…for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable” (Heath, 2473).
Your Name Liberation: Winning or Losing! Can a woman overcome her oppression in a patriarchal society? Charlotte Perkin Gilman’s short story, The Yellow Wallpaper and Kate Chopin’s novel, The Awakening which were written in the 19th century, reveals woman’s position in the patriarchal society. The Yellow Wallpaper depicts how the woman is suppressed in Victorian Era, how this imprisonment paves the way for her disturbed mentality and her struggle to overcome it, whereas, The Awakening depicts the protagonist’s awakening of her imprisonment in the institution of marriage in the same era and her struggle to be free ignoring all her bonds with the family and the society. These two works of literature proves that how male dominance
Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s, The Yellow Wallpaper, is a story that tells the unspoken truths of women in a time when such things as depression and mental illness were not to be spoken of. This story depicts how women with depression and mental illness were hidden from public view just as unwed mothers and people with disabilities were. Gilman uses the story to show how men viewed and responded to the emotional and mental health of women and how not listening to one’s own voice can be life threatening. The main focus of Charlotte Gilman’s story is how the emotional and mental health of women can be overlooked, ignored and the dangers that such behaviors cause. In 1899, women were looked at as delicate beings that only needed rest to cure what ailments afflicted them.